Lean Startup

73 results back to index


pages: 278 words: 83,468

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

3D printing, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, call centre, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, Computer Numeric Control, continuous integration, corporate governance, disruptive innovation, experimental subject, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, hockey-stick growth, Kanban, Lean Startup, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Metcalfe’s law, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, Network effects, payday loans, Peter Thiel, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, pull request, reality distortion field, risk tolerance, scientific management, selection bias, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, skunkworks, social bookmarking, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, the scientific method, Toyota Production System, transaction costs

You can also find a list of cities where people are interested in starting a new group, and tools to set one up yourself. The Lean Startup Wiki Not every Lean Startup group uses Meetup.com to organize, and a comprehensive list of events and other resources is maintained by volunteers on the Lean Startup Wiki: http://leanstartup.pbworks.com/ The Lean Startup Circle The largest community of practice around the Lean Startup is happening online, right now, on the Lean Startup Circle mailing list. Founded by Rich Collins, the list has thousands of entrepreneurs sharing tips, resources, and stories every day. If you have a question about how Lean Startup might apply to your business or industry, it’s a great place to start: http://leanstartupcircle.com/ The Startup Lessons Learned Conference For the past two years, I have run a conference called Startup Lessons Learned.

The most nervous I have ever been in a meeting was when I was attempting to explain Lean Startup principles to the chief information officer of the U.S. Army, who is a three-star general (for the record, he was extremely open to new ideas, even from a civilian like me). Pretty soon I realized that it was time to focus on the Lean Startup movement full time. My mission: to improve the success rate of new innovative products worldwide. The result is the book you are reading. THE LEAN STARTUP METHOD This is a book for entrepreneurs and the people who hold them accountable. The five principles of the Lean Startup, which inform all three parts of this book, are as follows: 1.

I maintain an official website for The Lean Startup at http://theleanstartup.com, where you can find additional resources, including case studies and links to further reading. You will also find links there to my blog, Startup Lessons Learned, as well as videos, slides, and audio from my past presentations. Lean Startup Meetups Chances are there is a Lean Startup meetup group near you. As of this writing, there are over a hundred, with the largest in San Francisco, Boston, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. You can find a real-time map of groups here: http://lean-startup.meetup.com/. You can also find a list of cities where people are interested in starting a new group, and tools to set one up yourself.


pages: 406 words: 105,602

The Startup Way: Making Entrepreneurship a Fundamental Discipline of Every Enterprise by Eric Ries

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, AOL-Time Warner, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, Ben Horowitz, billion-dollar mistake, Black-Scholes formula, Blitzscaling, call centre, centralized clearinghouse, Clayton Christensen, cognitive dissonance, connected car, corporate governance, DevOps, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fault tolerance, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, hockey-stick growth, index card, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, loss aversion, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, minimum viable product, moral hazard, move fast and break things, obamacare, PalmPilot, peer-to-peer, place-making, rent-seeking, Richard Florida, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, skunkworks, Steve Jobs, TechCrunch disrupt, the scientific method, time value of money, Toyota Production System, two-pizza team, Uber for X, universal basic income, web of trust, Y Combinator

A clear understanding of the tools of the Lean Startup is necessary before diving further into the Startup Way. The next chapter is a look at the methods that make up the Lean Startup way of working, complete with tools and examples. For newcomers, this chapter will provide an introduction to the foundational concepts of the Lean Startup. For those familiar with it, I’ve tried to focus on seeing the concepts through a new lens: how, as leaders, we can help our teams live these principles every day. CHAPTER 4 LESSONS FROM THE LEAN STARTUP There’s a reason why the Startup Way has emerged out of the Lean Startup movement.

Then I began writing about it, first online beginning in 2008, and then in a book, The Lean Startup, published in 2011. What happened from there exceeded my wildest expectations. The Lean Startup movement spread worldwide. More than a million people around the world read the book. Odds are, no matter where on the globe you are right now, there’s a local Lean Startup Meetup group nearby.1 Thousands of founders, investors, and others in the startup ecosystem rallied to embrace the ideas and practices of Lean Startup. In the book, I made a claim that seemed radical at the time. I argued that a startup should be properly understood as “a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.”

Silicon Valley is obsessed with vision and the visionary founder who can uniquely execute it. This focus has been a source of some controversy as Lean Startup has become more popular. Because of our emphasis on science, metrics, and experimentation, it’s a common (but misguided) criticism that Lean Startup seeks to replace vision or, in some ways, de-emphasize it. (I did my best to dispel this misunderstanding in The Lean Startup—starting on this page! There’s a reason why Part One of The Lean Startup was called “Vision.”) No methodology or process can replace this essential element of a startup. But why is vision so important?


pages: 567 words: 122,311

Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster by Alistair Croll, Benjamin Yoskovitz

Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, barriers to entry, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Ben Horowitz, bounce rate, business intelligence, call centre, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, constrained optimization, data science, digital rights, en.wikipedia.org, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, frictionless, frictionless market, game design, gamification, Google X / Alphabet X, growth hacking, hockey-stick growth, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, inventory management, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, Lean Startup, lifelogging, longitudinal study, Marshall McLuhan, minimum viable product, Network effects, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, performance metric, place-making, platform as a service, power law, price elasticity of demand, reality distortion field, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Salesforce, sentiment analysis, skunkworks, Skype, social graph, social software, software as a service, Steve Jobs, subscription business, telemarketer, the long tail, transaction costs, two-sided market, Uber for X, web application, Y Combinator

Keep that definition in mind as you read the rest of this book. Lean Startup Eric Ries defined the Lean Startup process when he combined customer development, Agile software development methodologies, and Lean manufacturing practices into a framework for developing products and businesses quickly and efficiently. First applied to new companies, Eric’s work is now being used by organizations of all sizes to disrupt and innovate. After all, Lean isn’t about being cheap or small, it’s about eliminating waste and moving quickly, which is good for organizations of any size. One of Lean Startup’s core concepts is build→measure→learn—the process by which you do everything, from establishing a vision to building product features to developing channels and marketing strategies, as shown in Figure 1.

Guts matter; you’ve just got to test them. Instincts are experiments. Data is proof. The Lean Startup Movement Innovation is hard work—harder than most people realize. This is true whether you’re a lone startup trying to disrupt an industry or a rogue employee challenging the status quo, tilting at corporate windmills and steering around bureaucratic roadblocks. We get it. Entrepreneurship is crazy, bordering on absurd. Lean Startup provides a framework by which you can more rigorously go about the business of creating something new. Lean Startup delivers a heavy dose of intellectual honesty. Follow the Lean model, and it becomes increasingly hard to lie, especially to yourself.

“It helps to set aside the vanity metrics, step back, and look at the bigger picture.“ Lean Startup and Big Vision Some entrepreneurs are maniacally, almost compulsively, data-obsessed, but tend to get mired in analysis paralysis. Others are casual, shoot-from-the-hip intuitionists who ignore data unless it suits them, and pivot lazily from idea to idea without discipline. At the root of this divide is the fundamental challenge that Lean Startup advocates face: how do you have a minimum viable product and a hugely compelling vision at the same time? Plenty of founders use Lean Startup as an excuse to start a company without a vision.


pages: 292 words: 85,151

Exponential Organizations: Why New Organizations Are Ten Times Better, Faster, and Cheaper Than Yours (And What to Do About It) by Salim Ismail, Yuri van Geest

23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, anti-fragile, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, behavioural economics, Ben Horowitz, bike sharing, bioinformatics, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, book value, Burning Man, business intelligence, business process, call centre, chief data officer, Chris Wanstrath, circular economy, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive bias, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, commoditize, corporate social responsibility, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, dematerialisation, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fail fast, game design, gamification, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, gravity well, hiring and firing, holacracy, Hyperloop, industrial robot, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, Internet of things, Iridium satellite, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Joi Ito, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, life extension, lifelogging, loose coupling, loss aversion, low earth orbit, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, Max Levchin, means of production, Michael Milken, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, NetJets, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, offshore financial centre, PageRank, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, prediction markets, profit motive, publish or perish, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Ronald Coase, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, social software, software is eating the world, SpaceShipOne, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, subscription business, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, the long tail, Tony Hsieh, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, uber lyft, urban planning, Virgin Galactic, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, X Prize, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Once the concept became successful, Apple scaled it aggressively; the company currently has 425 retail stores in sixteen countries. This technique is popularly known as the Lean Startup movement, which was created by Eric Ries and Steve Blank and is based on Ries’s book of the same name. The Lean Startup philosophy (also known as the Lean Launchpad) is in turn based upon Toyota’s “lean manufacturing” principles, first established a half-century ago, in which the elimination of wasteful processes is paramount. (Sample principle: “Eliminate all expenses with any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer.”) The Lean Startup concept was also given impetus by Steve Blank’s book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany, which focuses on customer development.

AirBnB or Adsense) Real time Dashboards and Employee Management 14) Which metrics do you track about your organization and your product innovation portfolio? (e.g. Lean Startup Analytics?)* ( ) We only track traditional KPIs monthly/quarterly/annually (e.g. sales, costs, profits) ( ) We collect some real-time, traditional metrics from transactional systems (e.g. ERP) ( ) We collect all real-time, traditional metrics and use some Lean Startup metrics ( ) We collect real-time traditional metrics and Lean Startup (value and learning) metrics like repeat usage, monetization, referral and NPS 15) Do you use some variant of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to track individual/team performance?

There are some limitations to the Lean Startup approach, including lack of competitor analysis or considerations in design thinking. Also, it is important to note that the ability to fail is much easier in software and information-based environments because iteration is so much easier. For a hardware company, it’s much harder to iterate. Apple launches hardware only when it’s perfect. You wouldn’t want to iterate and fail fast when building a nuclear reactor. As Nathan Furr and Jeff Dyer state in their new book, The Innovator’s Method: Bringing the Lean Start-up into Your Organization: “Don’t try to scale it until you nail it.”


pages: 289 words: 80,763

User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product by Jeff Patton, Peter Economy

anti-pattern, Ben Horowitz, business logic, business process, card file, index card, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, mail merge, minimum viable product, performance metric, software as a service, tacit knowledge

Where a typical design process may take weeks or months to validate a solution idea, a Lean Startup process usually takes just days. What’s in a Name I need to tell you that I love most things about Lean Startup thinking. But one thing I don’t love is the name. It’s not all that Lean, and the concepts are way too important to just be used by startups. Lean refers to the use of Lean thinking and principles as described by the Toyota Processing System decades ago, and Lean thinking as it’s popularly used in lots of other contexts now, including software development. There are tons of good ideas to be found in Lean thinking, and Lean Startup only scratches the surface.

There’s always some amount of risk, and the learning strategies described in a Lean Startup process are pretty useful in most contexts. There’s no need to try to justify to yourself or others that you need to behave like a startup. How Lean Startup Thinking Changes Product Design In the bad old days, we’d have come up with a big idea, built it, and hoped for the best. If we were trying to break out of that trap using a rigorous design process, we’d have done our best to set aside our great ideas, and then dig deep into research to understand the problems we’re solving. Here’s how I recommend we do things today, using Lean Startup thinking. Start by Guessing Yes, guessing.

Normally this would be disappointing news, because we all hate being wrong. But, in a Lean Startup approach, this is excellent news. It’s excellent because they found they were wrong after a couple of days of thinking and working, as opposed to finding out after weeks of a team building software. If you’re using this sort of approach, your biggest challenge will be to learn to celebrate what you’re learning as opposed to worrying about being wrong. In a Lean Startup approach, failing to learn is frequently the biggest failure. In a Lean Startup approach, build means build the smallest possible experiment you can.


pages: 387 words: 106,753

Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success by Tom Eisenmann

Airbnb, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, blockchain, call centre, carbon footprint, Checklist Manifesto, clean tech, conceptual framework, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, Dean Kamen, drop ship, Elon Musk, fail fast, fundamental attribution error, gig economy, growth hacking, Hyperloop, income inequality, initial coin offering, inventory management, Iridium satellite, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, Network effects, nuclear winter, Oculus Rift, PalmPilot, Paul Graham, performance metric, Peter Pan Syndrome, Peter Thiel, reality distortion field, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk/return, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social graph, software as a service, Solyndra, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, WeWork, Y Combinator, young professional, Zenefits

When the information service CB Insights identified determinants of failure for scores of recent startups, the most common problem—cited nearly half of the time—was “no market need.” That baffled me. After all, Lean Startup methods have been widely understood and embraced by entrepreneurs for almost a decade. Through experiments and iteration, any founder following these methods should have been able to identify and pivot to an attractive opportunity. But the landscape has been littered with roadkill in the form of self-proclaimed Lean Startups that never found a market. Why? Was something missing from Lean Startup’s dogma? I’ve been a Lean Startup apostle since 2010, when I first met the movement’s progenitors. That year, Steve Blank presented his seminal ideas to my students and Eric Ries became an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at HBS.

That year, Steve Blank presented his seminal ideas to my students and Eric Ries became an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at HBS. But as I dug deeper into case studies of failure, I concluded that Lean Startup practices were falling short of their promise. It’s not that the methodology isn’t sound, it’s that many entrepreneurs who claimed to embrace Lean Startup logic actually embraced only part of the Lean Startup canon. Specifically, they launched minimum viable products (MVPs)—the simplest possible offering that would yield reliable customer feedback—and iterated on them in response. By putting their MVP out there and testing how customers responded, these founders should have been able to avoid squandering too much time and money building and marketing a product that no one wanted.

Weak founders rarely attract strong teams and smart money. So, what went wrong? Lean Startup gurus advise founders to “launch early and often,” putting a real product into the hands of real customers to secure their feedback as fast as possible. Triangulate’s team did that, over and over. With each product iteration, they responded to customer feedback quickly and pivoted in a nimble manner. In doing so, they heeded another Lean Startup mantra: Fail Fast. But Triangulate’s team, like many entrepreneurs, neglected yet another Lean Startup precept: complete “customer discovery”—a thorough round of interviews with prospective customers—before designing and developing a minimum viable product.


pages: 252 words: 78,780

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us by Dan Lyons

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, antiwork, Apple II, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, business process, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Clayton Christensen, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, digital rights, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, full employment, future of work, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hacker News, hiring and firing, holacracy, housing crisis, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, initial coin offering, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, job-hopping, John Gruber, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kanban, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, loose coupling, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, Menlo Park, Milgram experiment, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, move fast and break things, new economy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parker Conrad, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, precariat, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, RAND corporation, remote working, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skinner box, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, software is eating the world, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, telemarketer, Tesla Model S, Thomas Davenport, Tony Hsieh, Toyota Production System, traveling salesman, Travis Kalanick, tulip mania, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, web application, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , workplace surveillance , Y Combinator, young professional, Zenefits

Just as Agile evolved from being a few ideas about how to write software into a magical methodology that can be used for almost anything, including transforming entire organizational cultures, so Lean Startup has been embraced by disciples who have imbued the methodology with near-supernatural powers. Like Agile, Lean Startup has become a global phenomenon, and an industry unto itself. Ries formed a consultancy, Lean Startup Co., to sell engagements, run conferences, and offer education programs. Other consultancies have built Lean Startup practices as well. Despite its name, Lean Startup is not aimed just at start-ups. Ries says any organization, big or small, can use the principles. People inside big companies can behave like entrepreneurs; Ries calls them “intrapreneurs.”

The biggest is Agile, a management fad that has swept the corporate world and morphed into what some call a movement but is more like widespread mental illness. The other is Lean Startup, which has its own cult-like following but is less popular. Taken together, these two methodologies represent an enormous global experiment in organizational behavior, in which millions of poor Dilberts are being turned into unwitting lab rats, sometimes with terrible consequences. Just like Taylor, proponents of Agile and Lean Startup believe with almost religious fervor that they can make organizations more efficient. Just like Taylor, they are probably well meaning but almost certainly dead wrong. Significantly, both Agile and Lean Startup originated in Silicon Valley, and both were invented by computer scientists.

As Immelt recounted in an essay for Harvard Business Review, he told his managers, “Guys, if we don’t become the best technology company in the world, we’re doomed. We’re dead. There’s no Plan B.” Ries became key to Immelt’s plan. Immelt brought him into GE to preach the Lean Startup gospel inside the company’s far-flung divisions. Back at headquarters, Ries and Immelt launched a program that GE calls FastWorks, which is based on Lean Startup. Over the past few years more than sixty thousand GE employees have received Lean Startup training. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. GE’s revenues stalled. The stock price languished, even as the overall stock market was surging. In 2017, the board booted Immelt.


pages: 232 words: 63,846

Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by Gabriel Weinberg, Justin Mares

Airbnb, content marketing, Firefox, Hacker News, if you build it, they will come, jimmy wales, Justin.tv, Lean Startup, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Network effects, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Salesforce, side project, Skype, Snapchat, social bookmarking, social graph, software as a service, TechCrunch disrupt, the long tail, the payments system, Uber for X, Virgin Galactic, web application, working poor, Y Combinator

In total, more than ten thousand people attended these events, where they connected over ideas that Seth wrote about as well as built relationships with one another. Great meetups can create lasting community connections. The meetup groups that watched the live stream of the first Lean Startup conference continue to meet years afterward: more than twenty cities still have regular “Lean Startup Circle” meetups. These events allow practitioners to continue to connect over the ideas in Eric’s book. They’ve also helped keep his book on the bestseller list. You can start your own meetup, join an existing one, or even sponsor an event where your prospective customers will be.

See offline events; speaking engagements; trade shows Evernote, 6, 169–70, 171–74 Evernote Peek, 173–74 Evite, 184, 188 Exceptional Cloud Services, xii existing platforms, 6, 167–74, 212 app stores, 167–70 case study of Evernote, 171–74 social sites, 170–71 targets, 174 Facebook, 4, 31, 78, 79, 120 fat-head SEO strategy, 93, 94–95, 100–101 Feld, Brad, 106, 176–77 Fernandez, Phil, 11–12 Ferriss, Tim, 83–84 50 percent rule, 8–12 Filepicker.io, 47 Firefox, 142, 169 First Round Capital, 137 Fishkin, Rand, 4, 92, 94, 99, 100, 195 500 Startups, 5 flyers, 4, 84, 86–87 Focused Apps LLC, 168 Fog Creek Software, 199 Followerwonk, 46, 131 Foundry Group, 176–77 Foursquare, 80 Fox News, 62 Fralic, Chris, 6, 133, 137, 139–44 FreeAppADay, 169 freemium business model, 114, 162 fund-raising, 15–16, 54–55 Gates Foundation, 50 GitHub, 202 giveaways, 61, 180 GoDaddy, 6 Godin, Seth, 187 Google, ix–x, 65, 71–72, 94, 137–38 Google Alerts, 47 Google Analytics, 69, 96 Google Docs, 120 Google Trends, 95 Graham, Paul, 2, 14, 42 Grasshopper.com, 60, 62–63 Gross Rating Points (GRPs), 87–88 Groupon, 113, 115, 138 growth goals, 12–15, 18, 35–36, 139 growth rate, 12, 16, 18 growth spurts, 14 guest posting, 25, 31, 106, 211 Guidewire Software, 148–49 Gumroad, 46–47 Hacker News, 46–47, 50, 78 HacktheSystem, 163 Half.com, 6, 58, 62, 133, 139–40 Halligan, Brian, 130 Hardware Startup Meetup, 187–88 Hauser, David, 60, 62–63 Help A Reporter Out (HARO), 53 Hipmunk, 4, 60, 61 hiring, use of community for, 202–3 HitTail, 186–87 Holiday, Ryan, 3, 48–49, 50, 52–53, 54–55 HostGator, 6 Hotmail, 120 HubSpot, 5, 100, 129–31, 154 Huffington Post, 48, 49 Hunch, 174 Imgur, 171 implication questions, 149–50 indirect response, in social advertising, 76–77, 81 Inflection, 4, 66–68, 70–71 influencers, 54 infographics, 99, 104, 105, 210 infomercials, 89–90 information products, 161 inner ring, 22–23 inner ring testing, 22–23, 28–31, 44 InstaCab, 87 Intuit, 43 investors fund-raising, 15–16 growth numbers, 15, 18 invitations, 44, 124–25, 188 iPhone, 59, 120, 138, 172 JBoss, 156–58 Johnson, Mark, 168 joint ventures, 138, 145 Jones, Kris, 159, 165–66 Jones, Kristopher, 6 Kagan, Noah, 3, 24–25, 42–45 Kawasaki, Guy, 62 Kayak, 6, 138–39, 145 Keyword Planner, 68–69, 94, 95 keyword research, 68–69, 70–71 KeywordSpy, 69 keyword strategies, 69, 72, 73, 93, 95–98, 100–101 Kincaid, Jason, 3, 51, 52 Klout, 46 Kopelman, Josh, 58 Kundra, Ashish, 5, 124 Lamar Advertising, 87 Launch Conference, 184 Law of Shitty Click-Throughs, 30–31, 33 lead generation, 161 lead qualifications, and sales funnel, 153–55, 157 leaky bucket, 10–11, 13, 17 Lean Startup, The (Ries), 7 Lean Startup model, 25–26, 185 Libin, Phil, 171–72 licensing, 138, 145 Lifehacker, 45, 50 Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? (Godin), 187 Linford, Zack, 134–35 link building, 23, 94–95, 98–99, 100–101 link buying, 99, 101 LinkedIn, 79, 98 LinkShare, 160, 165 link sharing, 46, 54 long-tail keyword strategy, 69, 73, 93, 95–98, 100–101 loyalty programs, 160–61 McCann, Chris, 199, 203 McKenzie, Patrick, 4, 96–97, 113, 132 magazine ads, 83, 85 MailChimp, 115–16, 120 Manhattan Media, 84 marketing.

Offline Events Sponsoring or running offline events—from small meetups to large conferences—can be a primary way to get traction. We spoke with Rob Walling, founder and organizer of MicroConf, to talk about how to run a fantastic event. Speaking Engagements Eric Ries, author of the bestselling book The Lean Startup, told us how he used speaking engagements to hit the bestseller list within a week of his book’s launch. We also interviewed Dan Martell, founder of Clarity, to learn how to leverage a speaking event, give an awesome talk, and grow your startup’s profile at such speaking gigs. Community Building Companies like Wikipedia and Stack Exchange have grown by forming passionate communities around their products.


pages: 296 words: 66,815

The AI-First Company by Ash Fontana

23andMe, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, blockchain, business intelligence, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Charles Babbage, chief data officer, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, combinatorial explosion, computer vision, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, DevOps, en.wikipedia.org, Geoffrey Hinton, independent contractor, industrial robot, inventory management, John Conway, knowledge economy, Kubernetes, Lean Startup, machine readable, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Network effects, optical character recognition, Pareto efficiency, performance metric, price discrimination, recommendation engine, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, single source of truth, software as a service, source of truth, speech recognition, the scientific method, transaction costs, vertical integration, yield management

MILESTONES FOR LEAN START-UPS VERSUS LEAN AIs lean start-up lean ai Minimum viable product Minimum predictive accuracy Product features Model features Output a calculation Output a prediction Performant Accurate Functional Reliable Product usage Prediction acceptance Launch a company Launch an AI-First product Building a lean start-up is different from building a Lean AI. Instead of building a product and a company, you’re generating a prediction and a system. Instead of showing a demo, you’re showing a report. Feedback is not qualitative (whether the product is easy to use) but quantitative (whether the prediction was accurate enough). The table below shows the differences at each step of the process. BUILDING LEAN START-UPS VERSUS LEAN AIs step lean start-up lean ai 0 Understand the customer’s problem 1 Determine product features Determine model features 2 Build a product Generate a prediction 3 Show a demo Show a report 4 Receive qualitative feedback Receive quantitative feedback 5 Build more features Collect more data 6 Relaunch the product Retrain the model 7 Measure usage Measure accuracy 8 Launch a company Launch an AI-First product PUTting MVPs Aside The lean start-up popularized the concept of a minimum viable product, or MVP: the minimum set of product features a customer needs for a product to be useful.

Instead of having product features as milestones, your milestones are model features. The output is a prediction, not a calculation. The performance and function of the prediction in the customer’s workflow are less important than the accuracy and reliability. The table below illustrates the different milestones. MILESTONES FOR LEAN START-UPS VERSUS LEAN AIs lean start-up lean ai Minimum viable product Minimum predictive accuracy Product features Model features Output a calculation Output a prediction Performant Accurate Functional Reliable Product usage Prediction acceptance Launch a company Launch an AI-First product Building a lean start-up is different from building a Lean AI.

Potential customers need to know whether that prediction is accurate when made for them—on their data and in their environment. Lean AI is a process to build an AI-First product. The process is about solving a specific problem with AI and building a small but complete AI that can grow into other domains or remain focused on one. Lean AI is not the same process as the lean start-up process. The goals of building a lean start-up are also different when building an AI the lean way. Instead of building an MVP, get to the PUT. Instead of product features as milestones, model features are milestones. The output is a prediction, not a calculation. The performance and function of the prediction in the customer’s workflow are less important than the accuracy and reliability.


pages: 307 words: 88,180

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee

"World Economic Forum" Davos, AI winter, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, bike sharing, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, corporate social responsibility, cotton gin, creative destruction, crony capitalism, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, Didi Chuxing, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, full employment, future of work, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, Google Chrome, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, if you build it, they will come, ImageNet competition, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, Internet of things, invention of the telegraph, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, low skilled workers, Lyft, machine translation, mandatory minimum, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Nick Bostrom, OpenAI, pattern recognition, pirate software, profit maximization, QR code, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Mercer, Rodney Brooks, Rubik’s Cube, Sam Altman, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, SoftBank, Solyndra, special economic zone, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, strong AI, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, urban planning, vertical integration, Vision Fund, warehouse robotics, Y Combinator

THE LEAN GLADIATOR But the copycat era taught Chinese technology entrepreneurs more than just dirty tricks and insane schedules. The high financial stakes, propensity for imitation, and market-driven mentality also ended up incubating companies that embodied the “lean startup” methodology. That methodology was first explicitly formulated in Silicon Valley and popularized by the 2011 book The Lean Startup. Core to its philosophy is the idea that founders don’t know what product the market needs—the market knows what product the market needs. Instead of spending years and millions of dollars secretly creating their idea of the perfect product, startups should move quickly to release a “minimum viable product” that can tease out market demand for different functions.

his autobiography, Disruptor: 周鸿祎, “颠覆者” (北京: 北京联合出版公司, 2017). Sinovation event in Menlo Park: Dr. Andrew Ng, Dr. Sebastian Thrun, and Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, “The Future of AI,” moderated by John Markoff, Sinovation Ventures, Menlo Park, CA, June 10, 2017, http://us.sinovationventures.com/blog/the-future-of-ai. book The Lean Startup: Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (New York: Crown Business, 2011). 3. CHINA’S ALTERNATE INTERNET UNIVERSE the Next Web: Francis Tan, “Tencent Launches Kik-Like Messaging App,” The Next Web, January 21, 2011, https://thenextweb.com/asia/2011/01/21/tencent-launches-kik-like-messaging-app-in-china/.

See risk-of-replacement graphs; unemployment, mass Johansson, Scarlett, 199 K Kaixin001, 42–43 Kasparov, Garry, 4 Ke Jiao, 113 Ke Jie, 1–2, 3, 5–6 Kennedy’s man-on-the-moon speech, 98 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 207 Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth, 188 Kurzweil, Ray, 140–41 L labor unions, decline of, 150 The Lean Startup, 44 lean startup methodology, 44–45 LeCun, Yann, 86, 88, 90, 93 Lee, Kai-Fu birth of first child, 177–79 cancer diagnosis, 176–77, 181–83, 225 epitaphs of, 180–81, 194 family of, 175–76, 177–79, 184–87, 193–94, 195, 225 Master Hsing Yun and, 187–90, 195 regrets of, 185–87, 188 research on lymphoma, 190–92 venture capital industry and, ix, xi, 3, 52 will of, 183–85 work obsession, 175–80 Lee Sedol, 3 legal decisions by judges, 115–16 Lenovo, 89 Li, Robin, 37 lifelong learning, 204 life purpose, loss of, 21 Li Keqiang, 62–63 LinkedIn, 39 Liu Qingfeng, 105 liveness algorithm, 118 love AI as opportunity to refocus on, 176–77, 196, 210 centrality of, in human experience, 198, 199, 225, 231–32 Lee’s cancer and refocus on, 193–96 Master Hsing Yun’s wisdom about, 189–90, 195 new social contract and, 200–201 regrets about not sharing, 185, 186–87, 195 service-focused impact investing and, 217 Luddite fallacy, 147–48, 151 Lyft, 79, 137 lymphoma, 176, 183, 190–92, 194 M Ma, Jack, 34–37, 60–61, 66–67, 137 machine learning advances in, recent, 160–61 algorithms, 40.


pages: 374 words: 89,725

A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas by Warren Berger

Airbnb, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, clean water, disruptive innovation, fail fast, fake it until you make it, fear of failure, food desert, Google X / Alphabet X, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Joi Ito, Kickstarter, late fees, Lean Startup, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, new economy, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Ray Kurzweil, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, TED Talk, Thomas L Friedman, Toyota Production System, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y Combinator, Zipcar

She advises looking for temporary assignments, outside contracts, advisory work, and moonlighting to get experience or build skills in new industries; executive programs, sabbaticals, and extended vacations can be valuable in providing opportunities to experiment. She concludes, “We learn who we are—in practice, not in theory—by testing reality.” Eric Ries of the Lean Startup has led a rapidly growing movement encouraging companies to do exactly what Ibarra is talking about for individuals—i.e., to experiment as a business, try lots of new ideas to see what works, and introduce new products and services quickly in order to “test and learn.” Ries feels the Lean Startup approach and philosophy can be applied to one’s life, as well. The basic principles hold up; if you’re starting a new career or even just embarking on a creative project or some other type of initiative, you’re in “start-up” mode—and the “lean” rules apply.

Asking why again, the company might discover the training program was underfunded; and asking why about that could lead back to fundamental company priorities about where money should be spent and what was most important in the end. The value of this kind of excavation-by-inquiry is becoming more widely recognized in the business world, most recently as part of the Lean Startup methodology taught by the author/consultant Eric Ries, who is a big proponent of the five whys. I asked Ries why a simple, almost-childlike practice seems to work so well. “It’s a technique that’s really designed to overcome the limits of human psychology,” Ries explained. By this he means that people are inclined to look for the easiest, most obvious explanation for a problem.

“Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once . . . Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works.” The rapid test-and-learn approach has caught on throughout the entrepreneurial world, fueled in part by Eric Ries’s Lean Startup phenomenon. Ries maintains that entrepreneurs, existing companies—or anyone trying to create something new and innovative—must find ways to constantly experiment and quickly put new ideas out into the world for public consumption, rather than devoting extensive resources and time to trying to perfect ideas behind closed doors.


pages: 52 words: 14,333

Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising by Ryan Holiday

Aaron Swartz, Airbnb, data science, growth hacking, Hacker News, iterative process, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Marc Andreessen, market design, minimum viable product, Multics, Paul Graham, pets.com, post-work, Silicon Valley, slashdot, Steve Wozniak, Travis Kalanick

Blogs and Personalities: Andrew Chen’s essays http://andrewchen.co Noah Kagan’s blog http://okdork.com Patrick Vlaskovits http://vlaskovits.com/blog twitter.com/pv Jesse Farmer http://20bits.com Sean Ellis http://www.startup-marketing.com Paul Graham’s essays http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html Aaron Ginn http://www.aginnt.com Josh Elman https://medium.com/@joshelman Or just follow most of these guys as they answer questions at: http://www.quora.com/Growth-Hacking Books: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries The Lean Entrepreneur by Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston Viral Loop by Adam L. Penenberg Contagious by Jonah Berger Lean Startup Marketing by Sean Ellis Presentations, Shows, and Classes: http://www.creativelive.com/courses/smart-pr-artists-entrepreneurs-and-small-business-ryan-holiday (a ten-hour course I made with creativeLIVE on marketing, attention, and free publicity) http://www.slideshare.net/mattangriffel/growth-hacking http://quibb.com/links/growth-hackers-conference-all-the-lessons-from-every-presentation http://www.slideshare.net/yongfook/growth-hacking-101-your-first-500000-users http://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lessons-learned-3836587 https://www.growthhacker.tv http://www.slideshare.net/yongfook/actionable-growth-hacking-tactics https://generalassemb.ly/education/user-acquisition-growth-hacking-for-startups https://www.udemy.com/growth-hacking-lean-marketing-for-startups http://www.slideshare.net/vlaskovits/growthhacker-live-preso-by-patrick-vlaskovits-pv http://www.slideshare.net/timhomuth/think-like-a-growth-hacker http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2011/09/24/how-to-create-a-million-dollar-business-this-weekend-examples-appsumo-mint-chihuahuas http://www.growhack.com/case-studies There Is Even a Growth Hackers’ Conference: http://growthhackersconference.com Endnotes 1 http://andrewchen.co/2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study. 2 E-mail to author, April 18, 2013. 3 Dialogue from Viral Loop by Adam L.

Within eighteen months, the founders sold Instagram for $1 billion. Both of these companies spent a long time trying new iterations until they had achieved what growth hackers call Product Market Fit (PMF). That is, the product and its customers are in perfect sync with each other. Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, explains that the best way to get to Product Market Fit is by starting with a “minimum viable product” and improving it based on feedback—as opposed to what most of us do, which is to try to launch with what we think is our final product. Today, it is the marketer’s job as much as anyone else’s to make sure Product Market Fit happens.

Everything can be improved—that’s what we’ve got to remind ourselves. The reality is that your product is probably broken in at least one way. And we must avail ourselves of the data and other information that tell us where those problems are. The role of the growth hacker is to ruthlessly optimize incoming traffic for success. As Eric Ries explains in The Lean Startup, “the focus needs to be on improving customer retention.” Forget the conventional wisdom that says if a company lacks growth, it should invest more in sales and marketing. Instead, it should invest in refining and improving the service itself until users are so happy that they can’t stop using the service (and their friends come along with them).


pages: 309 words: 81,975

Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization? by Aaron Dignan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, basic income, benefit corporation, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, butterfly effect, cashless society, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, content marketing, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Heinemeier Hansson, deliberate practice, DevOps, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, Elon Musk, endowment effect, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, gender pay gap, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, gig economy, Goodhart's law, Google X / Alphabet X, hiring and firing, hive mind, holacracy, impact investing, income inequality, information asymmetry, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Kanban, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, loose coupling, loss aversion, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, mirror neurons, new economy, Paul Graham, Quicken Loans, race to the bottom, reality distortion field, remote working, Richard Thaler, Rochdale Principles, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, six sigma, smart contracts, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software is eating the world, source of truth, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The future is already here, the High Line, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, uber lyft, universal basic income, WeWork, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

You’ll have to model and support this practice with discipline and passion to realize its many benefits. The Lean Startup Method. Inventing the future is hard. The early days of any startup (including new ventures inside established companies) are all about the search for product/market fit. The problem is that we fall in love with our initial vision and spend months and years perfecting a product that never sees the light of day. When we finally share it with customers, we’re astonished to find that it doesn’t really meet their needs or that their needs have changed. The Lean Startup method offers a more scientific approach to new-product development.

“easily distinguishable operationally”: Justin Fox, “Amazon, the Biggest R&D Spender, Does Not Believe in R&D,” Bloomberg, April 12, 2018, www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-12/amazon-doesn-t-believe-in-research-and-development-spending. look for the next big thing: Andrew J. Smart, “Why Organizations Should Embrace Randomness Like Ant Colonies,” Harvard Business Review, September 13, 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/09/why-organizations-should-embra. how might we validate that: “The Lean Startup Methodology,” The Lean Startup, accessed September 1, 2018, http://theleanstartup.com/principles. two hours and thirty minutes: “Dec 01: 1913: Ford’s Assembly Line Starts Rolling,” This Day in History, History.com, December 1, 2009, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fords-assembly-line-starts-rolling. 1,500 different companies around the world: Sumesh Krishnan and Dr.

It is necessary but not sufficient. It turns out agility isn’t an anomaly in this way. Many management innovations have emerged in the last half century, each promising to revolutionize work as we know it. Lean Manufacturing. Total Quality Management. ISO 9000. Six Sigma. Sociocracy. Holacracy. The Lean Startup. The list goes on and on. Each was, in its own way, a piece of an operating system. Some were misguided from the start. Others became perversions of themselves over time. And a few offered real wisdom that is yet to be fully realized. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote in Old Path White Clouds, “A finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.”


pages: 169 words: 56,250

Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City by Brad Feld

barriers to entry, clean tech, cloud computing, corporate social responsibility, deal flow, fail fast, G4S, Grace Hopper, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Marc Benioff, minimum viable product, Network effects, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, place-making, pre–internet, Richard Florida, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, SoftBank, software as a service, Steve Jobs, text mining, vertical integration, Y Combinator, zero-sum game, Zipcar

EXPERIMENT AND FAIL FAST The phrase fail fast is used throughout the startup ecosystem and has come to encapsulate the notion of continually trying new things, measuring the results, and either modifying the approach or doubling down, depending on the outcome. Eric Ries in his book The Lean Startup and the corresponding activity around the lean startup methodology has recently popularized this. This approach is a key attribute of vibrant startup communities. Think of your startup community as a lean startup—one that needs to try lots of experiments, measure the results, and pivot when things aren’t working. It’s not that you should fail fast across the entire startup community; instead you should fail fast on specific initiatives that don’t go anywhere, attract little interest, or generate no impact.

If you cross a beauty pageant with a debate, plop it into a contrived startup competition format, and surround it with a revivalist atmosphere filled with entrepreneurial gospel, then you get the glorious mess known as the campus business-plan competition. Such competitions are inevitably flawed. Time frames are artificial. Companies are at various stages of development. Hard emphasis on planning is at odds with lean startup practices. And only in the bizarre environs of a campus competition does a nonprofit seeking a sustainable way to fund an orphanage in Africa compete with a carbon-capture technology that would store greenhouse gases in the ocean. Here is an even more curious thing. It somehow works. CU Boulder launched its New Venture Challenge in 2008.

MICRO VERSUS MACRO Entrepreneurs often focus on the micro, that is, specific things that need to get done or will have impact. In contrast, government focuses on the macro. When I talk to leaders in government, they use words like global, macroeconomic, policy, innovation, and economic development. These are not words that entrepreneurs use; entrepreneurs talk about lean, startup, product, and people. Several years ago I was giving a talk about the Boulder startup community to a cross-section of Boulder business and local government people. During the Q&A section, a woman I knew got up and said, “What do you think ecodevos should be doing to help?” I stood, stunned for a moment because I didn’t know what ecodevos were.


Succeeding With AI: How to Make AI Work for Your Business by Veljko Krunic

AI winter, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, anti-fragile, anti-pattern, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, Bayesian statistics, bioinformatics, Black Swan, Boeing 737 MAX, business process, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, correlation coefficient, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, en.wikipedia.org, fail fast, Gini coefficient, high net worth, information retrieval, Internet of things, iterative process, job automation, Lean Startup, license plate recognition, minimum viable product, natural language processing, recommendation engine, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, six sigma, smart cities, speech recognition, statistical model, strong AI, tail risk, The Design of Experiments, the scientific method, web application, zero-sum game

Such a social situation isn’t exactly conducive to encouraging people to perform the careful analysis needed to disprove the group consensus. In short, beware of groupthink. TIP But we’re using an MVP approach! Some teams are Agile and/or use Lean Startup [28] methodologies for developing their software projects. In a Lean Startup methodology, the team is encouraged to dice projects into small chunks of work that can be presented to the customer for feedback. This chunk of work is called the minimum viable product (MVP). Part of the Lean Startup methodology is that if you find that your MVP isn’t what the customer wants, you can then try something else—the so-called pivot. Some will argue that because you’re building an MVP, you should quickly select some initial AI idea, show it to the customer, and see what the customer says.

K-means—One of the original clustering algorithms, it assigns its input data to one of the K clusters, where K is an integer. Label—In the context of classification, a label is the name of the category that data used in training belongs to. Lean startup—A methodology for running business operations described in Reis’ book [28]. Some of the principles of the lean startup methodology are to shorten the business development cycle by iterative product development and testing the product in the marketplace as soon as practical. While originally described in the context of startups, this methodology is now extensively used by organizations of all sizes.

Chapter 4 describes in detail how to make that connection. Depending on the methodology you’re using to run your business, business metrics could be readily available, or you might have to develop them yourself. Various methodologies are available for running a business and measuring its results. If you’re looking for a starting point, the Lean Startup methodology described in Ries’s book [28] is popular in startup and IT settings. I also recommend reviewing the Business Performance Excellence (BPE) model described in Luftig and Ouellette’s book [1]. You may not have a direct business metric at your department level to which you can direct your data science project.


pages: 410 words: 114,005

Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn From Their Mistakes--But Some Do by Matthew Syed

Abraham Wald, Airbus A320, Alfred Russel Wallace, Arthur Eddington, Atul Gawande, Black Swan, Boeing 747, British Empire, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Checklist Manifesto, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, crew resource management, deliberate practice, double helix, epigenetics, fail fast, fear of failure, flying shuttle, fundamental attribution error, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, Henri Poincaré, hindsight bias, Isaac Newton, iterative process, James Dyson, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Johannes Kepler, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, luminiferous ether, mandatory minimum, meta-analysis, minimum viable product, publication bias, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, selection bias, seminal paper, Shai Danziger, Silicon Valley, six sigma, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, US Airways Flight 1549, Wall-E, Yom Kippur War

“If I want to become a top commercial architect known for energy-efficient, minimalist designs, I must first design inefficient, clunky buildings.” The notion of getting into the trial and error process early informs one of the most elegant ideas to have emerged from the high-tech revolution: the lean start-up. This approach contains a great deal of jargon, but is based upon a simple insight: the value of testing and adapting. High-tech entrepreneurs are often brilliant theorists. They can perform complex mathematics in their sleep. But the lean start-up approach forces them to fuse these skills with what they can discover from failure. How does it work? Instead of designing a product from scratch, techies attempt to create a “minimum viable product” or MVP.

If the MVP sufficiently resembles the proposed final product, but none of the early adopters have any interest in it, then you can be pretty sure that the entire business plan is worth ripping up. You have saved a huge amount of time and money by failing early. But if the MVP looks like a possible winner, you can now find out how it can be improved further. This is the second question answered by the lean start-up approach. You can see what features the consumers like and what they don’t like; you can see flaws in the concept and vary its assumptions as you develop toward the final product. In other words, you have hardwired the evolutionary process into the design of the business. • • • And this brings us back to Drew Houston.

It totally blew us away.”16 Houston had demonstrated that people wanted the product. It enabled him to raise more capital and continue product development with confidence. But it also enabled him to interact with the early adopters, develop practical knowledge, and refine the product. That is the value of the lean start-up. Nick Swinmurn, another technology entrepreneur, created a rather different MVP. He reckoned the world needed a website in order to purchase a stylish collection of shoes. He could have gone about this in the usual way: raising millions in capital, creating a vast inventory, and developing relationships with all the various manufacturers: i.e., designing the entire company from scratch from a blueprint.


pages: 282 words: 85,658

Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century by Jeff Lawson

Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Big Tech, big-box store, bitcoin, business process, call centre, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, create, read, update, delete, cryptocurrency, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, deep learning, DevOps, Elon Musk, financial independence, global pandemic, global supply chain, Hacker News, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Kanban, Lean Startup, loose coupling, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, microservices, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, move fast and break things, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, software as a service, software is eating the world, sorting algorithm, Startup school, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Telecommunications Act of 1996, Toyota Production System, transaction costs, transfer pricing, two-pizza team, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ubercab, web application, Y Combinator

What that means is that every organization that hopes not just to survive but to succeed needs to understand how to innovate by building software, and how to hire and manage the people who build it. I’ve spent the last decade helping all kinds of companies, from Silicon Valley startups to Fortune 50 industrial behemoths, increase their chances of building game-changing innovations by adopting the principles outlined in my book The Lean Startup. As a result, I’ve often found myself trying to explain the semiconductor revolution to leaders who don’t understand software. Many still believe that this tsunami of disruption will somehow bypass their business. I once worked with a group of senior leaders from large hospital trade associations who were desperate to improve patient experience, but throughout our time together they made excuses for why that experience was so dismal.

I’ve seen executives at great companies unintentionally sabotage their own digital success by doing (and not doing) things that disempower talent and kill innovation. I once advised a company that made household products. They were trying to figure out how to test a new product through a small pilot program. I suggested creating a minimum viable product, an MVP in Lean Startup terms, or a version of the product that’s good enough to allow a company to collect useful feedback about its value from a small number of consumers while still being fast and inexpensive to create. The idea was to use the MVP to gather information as quickly as possible in order to determine next steps in the development process.

New features are turned on for 0.5 percent of customers to see how they like them. If the response is good, the company rolls the new feature out to more people. If something is wrong—a technical glitch or just plain dislike—the company rolls it back. That’s the essence of experimentation. It’s also the essence of the Lean Startup revolution started by Eric Ries, who wrote the foreword to this book. If you can try things in a low-risk way and quickly learn about your customers’ needs, why wouldn’t you? Rapid experimentation in software development is the most powerful aspect of Build vs. Die. It’s also why I describe it as a Darwinian process.


pages: 204 words: 66,619

Think Like an Engineer: Use Systematic Thinking to Solve Everyday Challenges & Unlock the Inherent Values in Them by Mushtak Al-Atabi

3D printing, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Barry Marshall: ulcers, Black Swan, Blue Ocean Strategy, business climate, call centre, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive bias, corporate social responsibility, dematerialisation, disruptive innovation, Elon Musk, follow your passion, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, happiness index / gross national happiness, invention of the wheel, iterative process, James Dyson, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Lao Tzu, Lean Startup, mirror neurons, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, remote working, shareholder value, six sigma, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, systems thinking

Adam Brimo, Co-founder of OpenLearning 11.6 Lean Entrepreneurship In the Return on Failure chapter we will discuss the importance of failure, through pushing the limits of what is possible, as a mechanism to seek feedback in order to fine tune the behaviour or the offering, and move on to higher levels of performance. The concept of “Lean Entrepreneurship” or “Lean Startup” represents one of the systematic techniques to yield a high Return on Failure. The concept is outlined in details in the book ‘The Lean Startup’ by Eric Ries. As entrepreneurs are always in search of repeatable, sustainable and scalable business models, the basic premise of the Lean Entrepreneurship is to quickly (and as cheaply as possible) build products and get them into the hands of customers so that entrepreneurs can measure, learn, and produce even better ideas that will help identify that repeatable, sustainable and scalable business model.

As entrepreneurs are always in search of repeatable, sustainable and scalable business models, the basic premise of the Lean Entrepreneurship is to quickly (and as cheaply as possible) build products and get them into the hands of customers so that entrepreneurs can measure, learn, and produce even better ideas that will help identify that repeatable, sustainable and scalable business model. The evolutionary Build-MeasureLearn lean entrepreneurship cycle shown below needs to happen in the shortest time possible and with the minimum cost possible. Lean Startup Reduces the Time Taken for the Build-Measure-Learn Cycle (Source: The Lean Startup, Eric Ries) Kal Joffres is the co-founder of Tandemic, where he helps NGOs and companies such as Microsoft, Novo Nordisk, and Standard Chartered to leverage the power of open innovation and social innovation to create new products and services. His organisation maintains HATI, the largest database for NGOs in Malaysia.

Although active in the NGOs and volunteering space, Kal admits that without putting a product in the hands of the customer, it is not likely to get the value proposition correct. “Let’s face it, your first idea is seldom your best one!” Kal said. Kal Joffres, Co-founder of Tandemic Realising that the real need is to develop a solution to help NGOs capitalise on the interest in volunteering as well as to train and manage volunteers, “do something good” used the lean startup principles to roll out a number of successful products including the “Super Volunteers Programme” where “super volunteers” help the NGOs organise and manage the other volunteers. Do Something Good Website 11.7 Funding Entrepreneurship No chapter about entrepreneurship is complete without a section on how to raise funds to support different entrepreneurial activities.


pages: 382 words: 105,819

Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe by Roger McNamee

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bill Atkinson, Black Lives Matter, Boycotts of Israel, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, carbon credits, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, computer age, cross-subsidies, dark pattern, data is the new oil, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, Filter Bubble, game design, growth hacking, Ian Bogost, income inequality, information security, Internet of things, It's morning again in America, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, laissez-faire capitalism, Lean Startup, light touch regulation, Lyft, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, messenger bag, Metcalfe’s law, minimum viable product, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, Network effects, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), PalmPilot, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, post-work, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, social graph, software is eating the world, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The future is already here, Tim Cook: Apple, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

This freed startups to focus on their real value added, the application that sat on top of the stack. Netflix, Box, Dropbox, Slack, and many other businesses were built on this model. Thus began the “lean startup” model. Without the huge expense and operational burden of creating a full tech infrastructure, new companies did not have to aim for perfection when they launched a new product, which had been Silicon Valley’s primary model to that point. For a fraction of the cost, they could create a minimum viable product (MVP), launch it, and see what happened. The lean startup model could work anywhere, but it worked best with cloud software, which could be updated as often as necessary.

They could raise venture capital on favorable terms, hire a bigger team, improve the product, and spend to acquire more users. Or they could do what the founders of Instagram and WhatsApp would eventually do: sell out for billions with only a handful of employees. Facebook’s motto—“Move fast and break things”—embodies the lean startup philosophy. Forget strategy. Pull together a few friends, make a product you like, and try it in the market. Make mistakes, fix them, repeat. For venture investors, the lean startup model was a godsend. It allowed venture capitalists to identify losers and kill them before they burned through much cash. Winners were so valuable that a fund needed only one to provide a great return. When hardware and networks act as limiters, software must be elegant.

The lean startup model could work anywhere, but it worked best with cloud software, which could be updated as often as necessary. The first major industry created with the new model was social media, the Web 2.0 startups that were building networks of people rather than pages. Every day after launch, founders would study the data and tweak the product in response to customer feedback. In the lean startup philosophy, the product is never finished. It can always be improved. No matter how rapidly a startup grew, AWS could handle the load, as it demonstrated in supporting the phenomenal growth of Netflix. What in earlier generations would have required an army of experienced engineers could now be accomplished by relatively inexperienced engineers with an email to AWS.


pages: 277 words: 91,698

SAM: One Robot, a Dozen Engineers, and the Race to Revolutionize the Way We Build by Jonathan Waldman

Burning Man, computer vision, Ford paid five dollars a day, glass ceiling, helicopter parent, Hyperloop, industrial robot, information security, James Webb Space Telescope, job automation, Lean Startup, minimum viable product, off grid, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, Strategic Defense Initiative, strikebreaker, union organizing, Yogi Berra

Before the summer wound down, Scott did three more things: He filed a patent (Nate, Tom, and the RPI engineers’ names accompanied his on the paperwork); met with the owners of Hydro-Mobile, who steered him to the annual industry trade show called World of Concrete; and interviewed a wild Lebanese man named Rocky. He also read more start-up books: one about Google, one about Steve Jobs, one about GM’s decline, and another called The Lean Startup. Of all the entrepreneurial books he eventually read, this was the most important. Conventional wisdom, which spewed forth from places like GM and Kodak, was: Thy products shall not be released until perfect, lest we disappoint customers and harm our reputation. Eric Ries, the young Yale-educated author of The Lean Startup, argued for proceeding unconventionally. Ries, whose first two companies had failed, proposed abandoning the quest toward the perfect thing; instead, he said, CEOs should aspire to build an MVP, or minimum viable product.

Because learning customer preferences outweighed whiteboard strategizing, and because idealizing an MVP challenged the traditional notion of quality, Ries said the path he was advocating felt dangerous. Indeed, proceeding down that path came with risks—of the legal and branding and morale varieties—and so Ries said that following the Lean Startup approach took courage. But he argued that the path wasn’t as risky as it seemed. The fear that a big bad competitor might swoop in and steal a start-up’s idea, he said, was largely imagined. A good start-up, adept at quickly building-measuring-learning, would always outdo the competition, regardless of what they knew, because the key to success was the ability to learn fast.

He could handle bumps, swim through ripples and waves and even swells. There’d be no avoiding mistakes, and rather than fear them, or Monday-morning-quarterbacking himself crazy, he thought learning and moving on sounded pretty good. As he put it later, “It doesn’t matter if it fails. It matters if we learn. It’s all about evolution.” The Lean Startup approach, though, was unmistakably if not expressly intended for start-ups selling software to consumers. Scott knew this; still, he figured he’d take the approach and use it at Construction Robotics, which was to make hardware for businesses. The differences were not negligible. Hardware is expensive, difficult to change, and very expensive to change quickly.


The Jobs to Be Done Playbook: Align Your Markets, Organization, and Strategy Around Customer Needs by Jim Kalbach

Airbnb, Atul Gawande, Build a better mousetrap, Checklist Manifesto, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, data science, Dean Kamen, fail fast, Google Glasses, job automation, Kanban, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, market design, minimum viable product, prediction markets, Quicken Loans, Salesforce, shareholder value, Skype, software as a service, Steve Jobs, subscription business, Zipcar

Once you have a solution, you can conduct more elaborate experiments of concepts and features. A so-called “minimum viable product” (MVP) can provide a wealth of business insight without having to build or launch anything. Think of a MVP as the shortest path to learning, not as building a product. Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, which describes a complete approach for business to mimic the experimental behavior of startups, explains in his book:12 The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort....

This book contains a wealth of practical details on how to run Lean experiments. Maurya has laid out a clear path for validating business concepts and product ideas. While he only briefly mentions JTBD in this volume, Maurya uses jobs thinking in his trainings and talks. For more on business experimentation in general, also see: Eric Ries, The Lean Startup, New York: Crown, 2011; Steve Blank, Four Steps to the Epiphany, K & S Ranch, 2005; and Michael Schrage, The Innovator’s Hypothesis, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014. Case Study: CarMax By Jake Mitchell, Principal Product Designer at CarMax “Could you look at another picture?” The research participant clicked the “next” arrow and an image of a car for sale appeared on the screen in front of them.

WATCH OUT: In commercial settings it’s very challenging to isolate variables in your experimentation. You may get feedback that is potentially misleading or doesn’t show direct causality. False positives and false negatives are common. SEE: • Travis Lowdermilk and Jessica Rich. The Customer-Driven Playbook (O’Reilly, 2017) • Ash Maurya. Running Lean (O’Reilly, 2012) • Eric Ries. The Lean Startup (Crown, 2011) • Steve Blank. Four Steps to the Epiphany, 2nd Ed (K & S Ranch, 2013) • Michael Schrage. The Innovator’s Hypothesis (MIT Press, 2014) Delivering Value 1. Map the consumption journey Journey maps show the interaction that customers have with your brand or offering. The intent of a journey map is to illustrate the consumption jobs that customers have.


pages: 292 words: 76,185

Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One by Jenny Blake

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Cal Newport, cloud computing, content marketing, data is the new oil, diversified portfolio, do what you love, East Village, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fear of failure, future of work, high net worth, Jeff Bezos, job-hopping, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, Lean Startup, minimum viable product, Nate Silver, passive income, Ralph Waldo Emerson, risk tolerance, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, software as a service, solopreneur, Startup school, stem cell, TED Talk, too big to fail, Tyler Cowen, white picket fence, young professional, zero-sum game

As much as we began from similar places of dissatisfaction, our stories all have something in common with how we proceeded, too. We each shifted to new, related work by leveraging our existing base of strengths, interests, and experience. Though it might seem as if each of us made drastic changes, we were not starting from scratch. In Silicon Valley parlance, we pivoted. Eric Ries, author of the business bible The Lean Startup, defines a business pivot as “a change in strategy without a change in vision.” I define a career pivot as doubling down on what is working to make a purposeful shift in a new, related direction. Pivoting, as we will refer to it in this book, is an intentional, methodical process for nimbly navigating career changes.

I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward.” CHAPTER 8: GET SCRAPPY What Small Experiments Can You Run? What Real-World Data Can You Collect? If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. —Henry David Thoreau, Walden IN THE LEAN STARTUP, ERIC RIES POPULARIZED THE CONCEPT OF THE MVP, OR MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT. By his definition, the MVP “helps entrepreneurs start the process of learning as quickly as possible. It is not necessarily the smallest product imaginable, though; it is simply the fastest way to get through the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop with the minimum amount of effort.”

Pink Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman The Start-Up of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha Plant The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks Body of Work by Pamela Slim Choose Yourself by James Altucher Scan So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman Tribes by Seth Godin Stand Out by Dorie Clark Essentialism by Greg McKeown Pilot The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy Business Model You by Tim Clark, with Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky The War of Art by Steven Pressfield Launch Smartcuts by Shane Snow The Dip by Seth Godin Outrageous Openness by Tosha Silver The Intuitive Way by Penney Peirce Playing Big by Tara Mohr Lead Conscious Business by Fred Kofman The Work Revolution by Julie Clow How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg The Alliance by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier NOTES INTRODUCTION Pivot Is the New Normal People are no longer working: Tyler Cowen, “A Dearth of Investment in Young Workers,” New York Times, September 7, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/business/a-dearth-of-investment-in-young-workers.html.


pages: 293 words: 81,183

Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference by William MacAskill

barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Branko Milanovic, Cal Newport, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, clean water, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Brooks, Edward Jenner, effective altruism, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, experimental subject, follow your passion, food miles, immigration reform, income inequality, index fund, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, job automation, job satisfaction, Lean Startup, M-Pesa, mass immigration, meta-analysis, microcredit, Nate Silver, Peter Singer: altruism, power law, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, randomized controlled trial, self-driving car, Skype, Stanislav Petrov, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, William MacAskill, women in the workforce

Moreover, as things progress, these variables shift: you’re constantly gaining new information; and new, often entirely unexpected, opportunities and problems arise. Because of this, armchair reasoning about what will and won’t happen isn’t very useful. In the case of entrepreneurship, Eric Ries has argued forcefully for this idea and created the popular Lean Startup movement. The idea behind the Lean Startup is that many entrepreneurs make the mistake of getting excited about some product or idea and then doing everything they can to push it onto the world even before they’ve tested it to see if there’s a market for it. When companies do this, products often fail because they were reasoning from the armchair when they should have been experimenting.

think of career decisions like an entrepreneur would think about starting a company: Jess Whittlestone, “Your Career Is Like a Startup,” 80,000 Hours (blog), https://80000hours.org/2013/07/your-career-is-like-a-startup/. This idea was independently proposed by LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur Ben Casnocha in their book The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career (New York: Crown Business, 2012). the popular Lean Startup movement: Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (New York: Crown Business, 2011). (entrepreneurs have less than a 10 percent chance of ever selling their shares in the company at profit): Ryan Carey, “The Payoff and Probability of Obtaining Venture Capital,” 80,000 Hours (blog), June 25, 2014, https://80000hours.org/2014/06/the-payoff-and-probability-of-obtaining-venture-capital/.

., 67–68 Hong Kong, 131 Humane League, 143, 190 Humane Society of the United States Farm Animal Protection Campaign, 190 Hurford, Peter, 147, 154–55, 157, 160–61 Idealist, 55 immigration, 187–89 immunization programs, 46–47 impact of causes, measurement of, 34 implementation of charities, 109, 117–18 improving lives as measure of impact, 34 income and food purchases, 20 global average of, 49 global income distribution, 48–49, 49 income inequality, 15–25, 16, 18, 50 pledging ten percent of, 199 richest 10 percent of world, 23 and well-being, 21, 21–23 India, 20, 123, 130 Indigenous, 132 Industrial Revolution, 131 inefficiencies of aid, 45–46 Innovations for Poverty Action Lab, 9, 105, 115 insulation and carbon footprint, 136 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 95, 98, 179 International Christian Support (now called Investing in Children and Their Societies; ICS), 6–7 international labor mobility, 187–89, 194 intestinal worms, 8–9, 183 Iodine Global Network (IGN), 126–27, 127 Islam, Habiba, 167 Ivory Coast, 104, 123 Japan earthquakes and tsunamis in, 58–59 and Fukushima disaster, 79–80, 83–84 homicide rate in, 185 Japanese Red Cross Society, 59 Jay-Z, 3 Jenner, Edward, 69 Jobs, Steve, 149, 152 juvenile crime, 70–74 Kahneman, Daniel, 173 Kaposi’s sarcoma, 52, 52–53 Karnofsky, Holden, 12 Kendrick, Pearl, 171 Kenya, 105, 122, 123, 170–71 Kerry, John, 179 Kilian, Bernard, 134 Kremer, Michael, 5–9, 11, 108 Kristof, Nicholas D., 130 Krugman, Paul, 131 Kuyichi, 132 Laos, 130 law of diminishing returns, 58–61, 62–66 Lean Startup movement, 159 legal profession as career choice, 164 Levitt, Steven, 84–86 Lewis, Greg and earning to give, 74–78 on impact of medicine, 62–66, 74–75, 76 medical ambitions of, 55, 56 life expectancies, 19, 45 Lipeyah, Paul, 6–7 literacy, 103–4 lives saved by doctors, 63–66, 75 Living Goods, 125–26, 127 lower-bound reasoning, 91 low-probablity events, 83–84 malaria and bed nets, 52, 53, 112, 113–14, 117 deaths from, 46–47, 60 and expected values, 81–82 funding dedicated to, 61–62 and program implementation, 117 See also Against Malaria Foundation marginal utility, 57–58 marketing careers, 165, 167 Massachusetts, 87 Mather, Rob, 157, 177 Matthews, Dylan, 174 measles, 121 meat and meat consumption, 136, 141–43 media coverage of disasters and causes, 59–60 medicine as career choice, 164 mega-charities, 120 Mercy for Animals, 143, 175, 190 Mexico, 133, 137 microcredit/microloans, 114–15 micromorts, 82–83 migrants, 187–89 Miliband, Ed, 90 missions of charities, 109, 110 Monbiot, George, 137–38, 140 Montagnier, Luc, 171 Montenegro, Claudio, 188 monthly donations, 197 moral licensing, 144–46 motivation, altruistic, 166–67 Moyo, Dambisa, 43, 44, 45, 46, 50 Mozambique, 3, 104, 123 M-Pesa system, 105 Mulder, Frederick, 177 National Area Health Education Center Organization, 63 National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, 129 natural disasters, 80 natural gas, 136 neglectedness of problems/causes, 181, 183 neglected tropical diseases, 183 Net Impact, 55 New Hampshire, 86 Niehaus, Paul, 169 Niemi, Niina, 134 Nigeria, 188 Nike, 129 Noda, Yoshihiko, 80 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 77 Nordhaus, William, 170 normal distributions in statistics, 47–48, 48 Norwood, Bailey, 141–42 No Sweat Apparel, 129 Nothing But Nets, 113–14 Nuclear Threat Initiative, 194 Obama, Barack, 179 objections to charitable giving, 40–41 Occupy Wall Street, 15 offsetting greenhouse gases emissions, 137–40 One Foundation, 3 100x Multiplier, 15–25, 62, 66 “the 1 percent,” 15–18 One Water, 3 Orbinski, James, 29–34 Ord, Toby, 12 outsourcing of jobs, 165 overhead costs of charities, 106 Oxfam, 120 Parliament (MP), value of career in, 90–94 passion and career choices, 149–53, 154 Penna, Robert M., 40 People Tree, 132 personal fit with problems/causes, 41–43, 148–55, 181 Peru, 191 Pew Charitable Trusts, 187 pigs and pork, 141–42, 143 Piketty, Thomas, 15 plastic bags, 136 PlayPumps, 1–5, 9–10, 47 PlayPumps International, 2–3, 11 polio, 121 political careers, 89–94, 174 political causes, 182 political rally participation, 88 poor countries and career choices, 76–78 cost effectiveness of programs in, 62, 121 and fair-trade products, 133 and law of diminishing returns, 61 lives saved by doctors in, 66 and sweatshop laborers, 131–32 presidential election of 2008, 85 preventable diseases, deaths from, 46–47, 60 Pritchett, Lant, 188 programming skills, 161, 164 Public Broadcasting System (PBS), 5 quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) concept of, 34–39 and cost-effectiveness evaluations, 112 and evidence behind claims of programs, 116–17 graphs illustrating, 35, 36 and lives saved by doctors, 63, 65 Quirk, Lincoln, 170 Quoidbach, Jordi, 150–51 Rath, Pim Srey, 130 regression to the mean, 73–74 Reid, Harry, 179 research, funding spent on, 110 research careers, 171–73 rich countries cost effectiveness for programs in, 62 and easily preventable diseases, 62 lives saved by doctors in, 66 Ries, Eric, 159 Round-about Water Solutions, 5 Rumsfeld, Donald, 44 Rwandan genocide, 29–32 Sachs, Jeffrey, 131 sacrifices in altruism, 12 sales careers, 165, 167 Salvation Army, 32–33 scale of problems/causes, 181 Scared Straight program, 70–74, 114 Schindler’s List (1993), 196–97 Schistosomiasis Control Initiative founder of, 157 GiveWell’s endorsement of, 124–25, 127, 197 and neglected tropical diseases, 183 scientific research careers, 171–73 Shapiro, Arnold, 70–71 Silver, Nate, 85 Singapore, 131 SKAT, 11 Skoll Global Threats Fund, 99 slavery, 94–95 smallpox, eradication of, 45–46, 47, 67–69, 121 social cost of greenhouse gas emissions, 97–98 software engineering, 164 Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative, 193 Somalia, 68 South Africa, 2, 3 South Korea, 131 Soviet Union, 68–69 Spain, 136 Stern Review, 190–91 Stocker, Thomas F., 179 strokes, 35 Stuiver, Ronnie, 1 sub-Saharan Africa health education in, 104 life expectancy in, 45 and Against Malaria Foundation, 125 and Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, 124 supply and demand, law of, 87–88 Swaziland, 3 SweatFree Communities, 129 sweatshops, 128–32 alternatives to, 132 conditions in, 129, 130 desirability of jobs in, 130–31 economic pressures of, 130 and extreme poverty, 130, 132 Swiss Resource Centre and Consultancies for Development (SKAT), 3–4 Taiwan, 131 Taleb, Nassim, 98 Teach for America, 55 Tea Party rallies, 89 technology oriented careers, 163, 164 tenure, 153 testing effectiveness of programs, 74 textbooks, 7, 103–4, 108–9 Thailand, 130 Theroux, Louis, 78 thinking at the margin, 57 Time magazine, 3 tractability of problems/causes, 181, 182–83 trade professions, 165 travel, carbon foot print from, 136, 137–38 Trigg, Jason, 166 tsunamis, 58, 79 tuberculosis, 60 Tversky, Amos, 173 Uganda and fair-trade products, 134 and GiveDirectly, 105, 122 and Living Goods, 125 Under the Knife (2007), 78 UNICEF, 3–4, 11, 120, 132 United Kingdom affluence of, 17 homicide rate in, 185 medical students in, 55 political careers in, 174 and social cost of greenhouse gas emissions, 97 value of political careers in, 90–94 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, 191 United States benefits from medicine in, 63, 65 career choices in, 164 and climate change, 191 cost effectiveness for programs in, 62 and factory farms, 190 and fair-trade products, 134 greenhouse gases of, 135 homicide rate in, 185 income and income inequality in, 15–16, 17, 22 and Industrial Revolution, 131 infrastructure costs in, 46 lives saved by doctors in, 75 medical students in, 55 poverty in, 18, 184 and presidential election of 2008, 85 and quality of goods, 20 and social cost of greenhouse gas emissions, 97 social security spending of, 44 and sweatshop laborers, 131–32 and value of charitable giving, 22 voting in, 84–87 United Students Against Sweatshops, 129 United Way, 33–34 University of Chicago Crime Lab, 187 University of Oxford Geoengineering Programme, 193 US Department of Labor, 132 US Department of Transportation, 46 US Environmental Protection Agency, 46 US Food and Drug Administration, 46 vaccination programs, 118 Valkila, Joni, 134 vegetarianism, 87–88, 141–43, 175 Virginia, 86 volunteering, 175–76 voting, expected value of, 84–87 Washington State Institute for Public Policy, 72 water, 1–5, 56–57 Watts, Alan, 149–50 Wave, 170–71 well-being, subjective assessments of, 21, 21–23, 39–40 Well-Being-Adjusted Life Years (WALYs), 39–40 What If Money Was No Object (YouTube video), 149 The White Man’s Burden (Easterly), 43 Whittlestone, Jess, 168 Wikipedia, 175 Wilson, Timothy, 150–51 Winfrey, Oprah, 55 World Bank, 60, 134 World Bank Development Marketplace Award, 2 World Health Organization (WHO), 60, 69 WorldVision, 120 World War II, 98 Wozniak, Steve, 152 Yunus, Muhammad, 114 Zambia, 3 Zhdanov, Viktor, 68–69 Zimbabwe Bush Pump, 4 Looking for more?


pages: 704 words: 182,312

This Is Service Design Doing: Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World: A Practitioners' Handbook by Marc Stickdorn, Markus Edgar Hormess, Adam Lawrence, Jakob Schneider

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, business cycle, business process, call centre, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, crowdsourcing, data science, different worldview, Eyjafjallajökull, fail fast, glass ceiling, Internet of things, iterative process, Kanban, Lean Startup, M-Pesa, minimum viable product, mobile money, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, RFID, scientific management, side project, Silicon Valley, software as a service, stealth mode startup, sustainable-tourism, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, the built environment, the scientific method, urban planning, work culture

The stakeholders then see their concepts fail with their own eyes (or succeed, but then it was you and your team that needed that validation). 64 Build-measure-learn cycles can be traced back at least as far as Galileo and the dawn of the scientific method, with incarnations like the Deming cycle from the 1950s or the more recent Lean Startup. See Moen, R. (2009). “Foundation and History of the PDSA Cycle,” Ries, E. (2011) and The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Crown Books. 65 The points here are presented from a service design perspective. For a great resource on building effective teams, check out Duhigg, C. (2016).

TISDT is a book I refer to during work and it would be a great experience to be part of creating the new chapter for it. I’d like to help and give back from my experience from being a big enterprise company how I see this integrating. I’ve been managing a business R&D unit working with the use of Lean Startup, Design Thinking and SD. I have practical experience of introducing these methods in the corporate environment, I saw some good patterns and pitfalls while doing that. Doing is the hard bit! I’ve got about 18 years of experience in design and development. The last 8 years have been in a SD capacity.

Other people might talk about design thinking, service design thinking, new marketing, UX design, holistic UX, CX design, human-centered design, customer experience management, experience design, touchpoint management, lean UX, new service development, new product development, customer journey work, or innovation, to name a few. Others will notice similarities with lean startup and agile development methodologies. We don’t care what you call it – what matters is what you do and how you do it. Still, you might want to watch out, because some people have very strong opinions about what exactly terms like service design and design thinking and all those others really mean.


pages: 293 words: 78,439

Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today's Business While Creating the Future by Scott D. Anthony, Mark W. Johnson

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, Apollo 13, asset light, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, blockchain, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Carl Icahn, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, commoditize, corporate governance, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, diversified portfolio, driverless car, Internet of things, invention of hypertext, inventory management, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, late fees, Lean Startup, long term incentive plan, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Minecraft, obamacare, Parag Khanna, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer lending, pez dispenser, recommendation engine, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skype, software as a service, software is eating the world, Steve Jobs, subscription business, the long tail, the market place, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, transfer pricing, uber lyft, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y Combinator, Zipcar

To optimize the kite, the Wrights built a simple wind tunnel, which made it much easier to run experiments. Fortunately, the past decade has concurrently seen an explosion of tools to help design and execute experiments and a rapid decline in the cost of these experiments. Books like Steve Blank’s Four Steps to the Epiphany, Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup, and coauthor Scott Anthony’s The First Mile provide practical toolkits to systematically de-risk an idea. The basic idea behind all these books is to apply the scientific method to strategic uncertainty. The First Mile uses two acronyms to explain the process. The first is DEFT, which stands for document, evaluate, focus, and test.

Rather, in his career Blank has actively participated in more than a dozen startups and by now has mentored hundreds more. Over the past decade he has emerged as a prominent thought leader, describing how to take a more scientific approach to the creation of new businesses. One of his mentees, Eric Ries, wrote the 2011 book The Lean Startup, which has become a must-read for almost any entrepreneur. The epigraph in Blank’s 2013 book with Bob Dorf (The Startup Owner’s Manual) says it all: “Get out of the building!” It is hard to become more curious when the stimuli you receive is limited to the thick carpets of the executive floor or the five-star hotel you stay at on road trips.

The discipline of testing: Anthony, The First Mile; Steven Gary Blank and Bob Dorf, The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company (Pescadero, CA: K&S Ranch, 2012); Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan, Discovery-Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009); Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (New York: Crown Business, 2011). Chapter 4 Paul Graham quote: Startupquote.com, http://startupquote.com/post/10855215114. Medtronic and Plunify case examples: Scott D. Anthony, “The New Corporate Garage,” Harvard Business Review, September 2012.


pages: 326 words: 74,433

Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup by Brad Feld, David Cohen

An Inconvenient Truth, augmented reality, computer vision, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, deal flow, disintermediation, fail fast, hiring and firing, hockey-stick growth, Inbox Zero, independent contractor, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, lolcat, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, risk tolerance, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, social web, SoftBank, software as a service, Steve Jobs, subscription business

Take all the inputs you can gather and then make the decisions that feel right to both your head and your gut. Ryan McIntyre offers potentially conflicting advice at TechStars in 2009. Progress Equals Validated Learning Eric Ries Eric is the co-founder and CTO of IMVU and is the author of The Lean Startup Methodology. Would you rather have $30,000 or $1,000,000 in revenues for your startup? Sounds like a no-brainer, but I'd like to try and convince you that it's not. This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of charging customers for your product from Day One. I have counseled innumerable entrepreneurs to change their focus to revenue, and many companies that refuse this advice get themselves into trouble by running out of time.

But as Eric points out, the measures of progress are often wrong and misleading, especially at the early stages. Using the filter of “validated learning” (namely—something that you've learned that you know is true) is a powerful frame of reference that forces more discipline into the discussion. We've gotten to know Eric well over the past few years and think his work on the Lean Startup Methodology is incredible. We encourage all entrepreneurs to become disciples of Eric. The Plural of Anecdote Is Not Data Brad Feld Brad is a managing director at Foundry Group and one of the co-founders of TechStars. A phrase that is often heard around TechStars is “the plural of anecdote is not data.”

EventVue raised $500,000 from angel investors after completing TechStars in 2007 but ultimately shut down. All startups have too many available choices. It's the fundamental challenge of a startup—what customers to choose, what problem to solve, what flow to present to the user. Several methodologies have recently emerged, such as Eric Ries's lean startups to help guide you through the critical market and product decisions that drive you toward the promised land of hockey stick growth. But these methodologies fail to directly address an absolutely crucial component of doing a startup: how to keep everyone excited about your company. In my firsthand experience with EventVue and my experience watching other TechStars companies, I've come to understand that the magic to keeping and growing momentum in your startup is knowing what to celebrate.


pages: 421 words: 110,406

Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy--And How to Make Them Work for You by Sangeet Paul Choudary, Marshall W. van Alstyne, Geoffrey G. Parker

3D printing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alvin Roth, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andrei Shleifer, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, bitcoin, blockchain, business cycle, business logic, business process, buy low sell high, chief data officer, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean water, cloud computing, connected car, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data is the new oil, data science, digital map, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, financial innovation, Free Software Foundation, gigafactory, growth hacking, Haber-Bosch Process, High speed trading, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, market design, Max Levchin, Metcalfe’s law, multi-sided market, Network effects, new economy, PalmPilot, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, pets.com, pre–internet, price mechanism, recommendation engine, RFID, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, search costs, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, smart grid, Snapchat, social bookmarking, social contagion, software is eating the world, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, the long tail, the payments system, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Thus, a seemingly abstract metric like user distance may have a highly practical, dollars-and-cents impact on your bottom line. STAGE 3: METRICS DURING THE MATURITY PHASE Once a platform business has moved past the phases of startup and early growth, new challenges and issues emerge. Eric Ries, the writer and entrepreneur known for pioneering the “lean startup” movement, emphasizes that, for the mature company, incremental innovation and metrics must be closely related to each other. “When making improvements to your product,” Ries observes, “the only arbiter of whether or not it was successful is the metrics. And, when you are implementing an improvement to your product, you should be testing that improvement against a baseline.”

Having learned from this mistake, Gary Swart, former CEO of oDesk, writes eloquently about the need for highly focused metrics, especially in the critical early period of a startup: As a business leader you need to figure out the metric that matters most for your company and understand that the more you measure, the less prioritized you’ll be. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to measure everything. What I’ve learned is that in the early days, what matters most is having customers who love and use your product. Figure out the one or two best measures to determine this.17 Lean startup guru Eric Ries echoes the need to be selective in the design and use of metrics. In particular, he cautions against what he calls “vanity metrics,” such as total sign-ups—a relatively meaningless statistic that often increases even as the volume of interactions is flat or actually declining. Vanity metrics fail to indicate accurately whether the business is really achieving critical mass or the liquidity it needs.

Teresa Torres, “Why the BranchOut Decline Isn’t Surprising,” Product Talk, June 7, 2012, http://www.producttalk.org/2012/06/why-the-branchout-decline-isnt-surpising/. 4. John Egan, “Anatomy of a Failed Growth Hack,” John Egan blog, December 6, 2012, http://jwegan.com/growth-hacking/autopsy-of-a-failed-growth-hack/. 5. Derek Sivers, “The Lean Startup—by Eric Ries,” Derek Sivers blog, October 23, 2011, https://sivers.org/book/LeanStartup. 6. Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz, Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2013). 7. Christian Rudder, “The Mathematics of Beauty,” OkTrends: Dating Research from OkCupid, January 10, 2011, http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-mathematics-of-beauty/. 8.


pages: 201 words: 60,431

Long Game: How Long-Term Thinker Shorthb by Dorie Clark

3D printing, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, Blue Ocean Strategy, buy low sell high, cognitive load, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, delayed gratification, digital nomad, driverless car, Elon Musk, fail fast, Google X / Alphabet X, hedonic treadmill, Jeff Bezos, knowledge worker, lake wobegon effect, Lean Startup, lockdown, minimum viable product, passive income, pre–internet, rolodex, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, solopreneur, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steven Levy, the strength of weak ties, Walter Mischel, zero-sum game

If customers were interested—if they were willing to download it or use it or maybe even pay for it—that was evidence that there was something there, and you could safely start allocating your time to make it better. But if no one bit? Best to just move on, so you didn’t waste time or money or energy. Blank’s concepts, popularized in a 2011 book by Eric Ries, eventually became known as the lean startup methodology. This simple philosophy—test before you fully invest—took Silicon Valley by storm, making processes there far more efficient. But it turns out, it’s also applicable in our own lives. All too often, smart professionals hesitate to put their “thing”—whether it’s an article, a new website, a talk, an idea—out into the world.

“It’s not quite ready yet,” they’ll say, or “I’m still making a few tweaks,” or “It needs a little more time.” That’s fine up to a point; you don’t want to release something into the world that’s awful, or so rough that it’s unintelligible. But after a while, this kind of thinking becomes an excuse that can hold us back. The lesson we can learn from Silicon Valley and the lean startup methodology is that we should, in the early days, treat everything as an experiment. Failure is upsetting to so many of us because it implies finality: you tried to accomplish something, and it didn’t happen. But an experiment, which you recognize from the beginning has an uncertain outcome, can hardly be called a failure.

See also networks and networking connectors, 150–151 content creation, 103–105, 118–119 gaining recognition through, 125 leveraging, 126–127 Corcoran, Marlena, 83–84 CORE Leadership Program, 63 costs opportunity, 45–46 physical/emotional, 46–47 Covid-19 pandemic, 3–5, 87 creating, 103–105 Crenshaw, Dave, 27–29, 197–198 culture going against the prevailing, 29 on our calling, 56 curiosity, 210 customer service, 40–41 Cutruzzula, Kara, 103–104 Davies, Ali, 24 deadlines, 88–89, 187–188 deception phase of exponential growth, 166–167 delayed gratification, 193–196 Deloitte, 63 Del Val, Dayna, 181–184 Design the Life You Love workshop, 110–111 Diamandis, Peter, 165–166 DiBernardo, Albert, 106, 200–201 Dierickx, Constance, 60–61 Dijksterhuis, Ap, 117–118 distance to empty, 197–199 diversity, long- vs. short-term thinking about, 6–7 documentary filmmaking, 57–58 Do It for Yourself (Cutruzzula), 104 dorieclark.com, 221 Drucker, Peter, 110, 117 Edison, Thomas, 181 Edmondson, Amy, 119 Edwards, Sue, 57–58 email, 21–22 emotional costs, 46–47 The E-Myth Revisited (Gerber), 102 e-newsletters, 220–221 Entrepreneurial You (Clark), 5, 99, 147, 220 entrepreneurship, learning, 101–103 Etsy, 62 execution mode, 3 hidden benefits of, 22–25 expectations, 168–169 experimentation, 15 20% time for, 14, 74–78 failure and, 180–181 expertise, recognition for, 125–127 exploration, 73–93 20% time for, 14, 74–78 carving out time for, 82–85 life portfolios and, 78–80 of New York City, 73–74, 81–82 realizing dreams through, 85–92 exponential growth, 165–167 exponential technologies, 165–166 failure, 9, 15 extreme goals and, 173–179 finding alternatives and, 184–187 involving your community and, 188–190 looking foolish and, 66–67 minimum benefit and, 90 multiple paths and, 181–184 resilience and, 211 rethinking, 173–190 family, 47–48 leveraging for, 120 meaning-based goals and, 55–56 prioritizing, 27–28 saying no and, 39, 46 Feingold, Sarah, 61–62 Fernandez, Jenny, 139–140, 149 Ferrazzi, Keith, 102 Ferriss, Tim, 23 focus, 14–15, 53 deciding what to be bad at and, 39–41 heads-up/heads-down strategy for, 99–100 on money, 55 strategic leverage and, 112, 115–128 thinking in waves and, 95–113 time for exploring, 73–93 Fogg, BJ, 195 FOMO (fear of missing out), 34, 47–48 Forbes, 97–98 Fowlds, Samantha, 205–206 Freestyle Love Supreme Academy, 65–66 Frei, Frances, 40–41 Friedman, Stew, 119 Fun Home (musical), 74 gatekeepers, 161–162 Gautam, Tanvi, 138–139 Gerber, Michael, 102 Germanotta, Stefani, 192 Getting Things Done (Allen), 29–30 Gino, Francesca, 133–134, 149 Give and Take (Grant), 141 Gmail, 75 goals, 14–15, 53 20% time and, 82–85 based on the kind of person you want to be, 65–67 coaches for, 86–88 deadlines for, 88–89 deciding what to be bad at and, 39–41 dreams and, 85–92 evaluating opportunities based on, 38–39 evaluating what you’re doing now and, 59–61 exploring, 92 extreme, 67–72, 173–179 failure and, 173–179 forgetting what others think and, 63–65 getting support for, 86 leveraging for professional, 122–123 optimizing for interesting, 14, 56–59 perseverance and, 157 planning around your priorities and, 27–30 remembering why you started and, 61–63 setting, 55–72 strategic overindexing and, 96–98 time frames for, 90–92 tracking data on, 115–116 Godin, Seth, 171 Goldsmith, Marshall, 109–112, 117 Good Morning America (TV show), 145–146 Good to Great (Collins), 102 Google, 159 20% time at, 14, 74–78 News, 75 X, 76–78 Granovetter, Mark, 132 Grant, Adam, 141 gratification, short-term vs. long-term, 13, 193–196 Gulati, Daniel, 147 Guthier, Christina, 122–123 habits, tiny, 195 Hagel, John, 34 Hall, Jeffrey, 132 Hamilton (musical), 65–66 Harry Potter (Rowling), 161 Harvard Business Review, 97–98, 137, 159 heads-up/heads-down strategy, 99–100 hedonic adaptation, 160 “Hell yeah or no” strategy, 35–37 Hersey, Paul, 109–110 Hesselbein, Frances, 110 Hill, Napoleon, 184 Horn, Sam, 187, 188 Incontrera, Marie, 70–71 information asking for, to evaluate opportunities, 42–44 attention to, 25 hoarding, 12 networking and, 107–108 innovation exponential growth and, 165–166 feature, 7 life portfolios in, 78–80 making time for, 14 space for, 29–30 interest optimizing for, 14, 56–59 setting goals based on, 59–61 time for exploring, 73–78 introverts, 107–108 jazz album, 146–149 Joel, Mitch, 144–145 Johnson, Rukiya, 55–56 Kalin, Rob, 62 KashKlik, 142–143 Kaur, Manbir, 46–47 Kim, W. Chan, 179 Klein, Joe, 176 Kleinert, Jared, 99 Kolber, Petra, 85–86, 88–90 Konnikova, Maria, 194 Kotler, Steven, 165–166 Lader, Linda, 96 Lader, Phil, 96 Lady Gaga, 192 Lake Wobegon effect, 40 Last, Becky, 84–85 Lazarus, Bruce, 74 lean startup methodology, 180–181 learning 20% time and, 92 avoiding doing by, 103 career wave of, 100, 101–103 continuous, 89–90 looking foolish during, 66–67 the next thing, 110–112 online, 5 setting extreme goals and, 67–72 Leonard, George, 167 leverage, 112, 115–128 of currency you have, 124–128 for lifestyle, 120–122 for professional goals, 122–124 for relationships, 120 life portfolios, 78–80 lifestyle, leveraging for, 120–122 Limitless (Otting), 143 Lindstrom, Martin, 6–7 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 8 long-term thinking character and, 209–210 flexibility and, 6 foundational skills for, 195 for goals, 90–92 keys to, 209–211 optimizing for, 127–128 for personal life, 8–16 relevance of, 4 magical thinking, 28 Makabee, Hayim, 142–143, 149 Management Research Group, 21 Marion Stoddart: The Work of 1000 (documentary), 57–58 Marsh, Kris, 140–141 Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches (MG100), 111–112 marshmallow study, 193–194 Mary Baldwin University, 201–202 mastermind groups, 184–187 Mauborgne, Renée, 179 Mayer, Marissa, 75 McKinsey, 21 meaning optimizing for interesting and, 56–59 remembering why you started and, 61–63 setting goals based on, 55–56 Mencken, H.


pages: 231 words: 71,248

Shipping Greatness by Chris Vander Mey

business logic, corporate raider, don't be evil, en.wikipedia.org, fudge factor, Google Chrome, Google Hangouts, Gordon Gekko, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, minimum viable product, performance metric, recommendation engine, Skype, slashdot, sorting algorithm, source of truth, SQL injection, Steve Jobs, Superbowl ad, two-pizza team, web application

We all know that Amazon, Google, and others have been wrong many times. So you’re probably right, but the best way to prove you are is to give customers a product and see what they say. Serial software entrepreneur Eric Ries seems to agree with this approach, and makes a compelling case for building what he calls the minimum viable product in his book The Lean Startup (Crown Business). Ries defines the minimum viable product as the smallest fraction of your product that a sufficient number of customers will use in order to validate an assumption. You may only need a handful of customers to know you’re on the right track, and you may only need to validate one assumption at a time.

But you do want to measure user engagement so you can answer questions like “Are users spending time on the site?” and “Are they posting?” A relevant collection of metrics for these behaviors might be posts in seven days per seven-day-active-user and minutes spent on-site per seven-day active user. Eric Ries isn’t a big fan of these growth metrics in his book The Lean Startup (Crown Business). He calls them vanity metrics because you can puff up your chest, point to a chart that goes up and to the right, and say, “Look, we’re awesome! We’re growing!” even as your product is failing 90% of the incoming new users. It’s a fair point. This is why you need to look at metrics like conversion and engagement, among others.

Meeting notes and schedules for: your team’s weekly meeting, UI review, product review, engineering review, bug triage, legal reviews, weekly business development, and weekly customer support check-ins. Appendix C. References and Further Reading Product Definition Kawasaki, Guy. The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything. New York: Portfolio Hardcover, 2004. Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. New York: Crown Business, 2011. Managing Management Bossidy, Larry, and Ram Charan. Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. New York: Crown Business, 2002. Drucker, Peter F. The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done, Revised Edition.


pages: 260 words: 76,223

Ctrl Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It. by Mitch Joel

3D printing, Amazon Web Services, augmented reality, behavioural economics, call centre, clockwatching, cloud computing, content marketing, digital nomad, do what you love, Firefox, future of work, gamification, ghettoisation, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kodak vs Instagram, Lean Startup, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Network effects, new economy, Occupy movement, place-making, prediction markets, pre–internet, QR code, recommendation engine, Richard Florida, risk tolerance, Salesforce, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social graph, social web, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, the long tail, Thomas L Friedman, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Hsieh, vertical integration, white picket fence, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

We live in a new era of entrepreneurship, and business ideas can be tested and marketed for success like never before. Eric Ries has been preaching the value of what he has called The Lean Startup in his very popular blog and bestselling business book of the same name (published two years ago), and it has become all the rage. Much like Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point became a catchphrase that every business executive used in 2002, over the past two years every person looking to start a business has been talking about it being a “lean startup.” The most embraced concept in Ries’s book was the notion of the “pivot”: that the most successful startups (the ones that eventually turned a two-person operation into a multimillion-or multibillion-dollar business) were the ones that were able to identify quickly that what they were doing did not have much commercial viability and were able to “pivot” the business model—through iteration—into something people actually wanted to use.

He is known to get way down into the weeds of the work. For his television show he handles everything from editing down to the music selection. On December 10, 2011, C.K. released his fourth full-length comedy special, Live at the Beacon Theater, but unlike his previous specials, he decided to run this project like an ultra-lean startup and distributed it digitally through his own website. Leveraging the power of his direct relationship with his fans, C.K. circumvented physical and broadcast media, publishers, producers, and distribution companies. He took a startup approach (including the participation in a Reddit AMA—Ask Me Anything—question-and-answer session online).


pages: 561 words: 114,843

Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business, + Website by Matt Blumberg

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, airport security, Albert Einstein, AOL-Time Warner, bank run, Ben Horowitz, Blue Ocean Strategy, book value, Broken windows theory, crowdsourcing, deskilling, fear of failure, financial engineering, high batting average, high net worth, hiring and firing, Inbox Zero, James Hargreaves, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, pattern recognition, performance metric, pets.com, rolodex, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Skype

Luckily, there’s a middle ground: a process of formalizing and communicating hypotheses that doesn’t take months of work and lead to hundreds of spreadsheets—and one that allows considerable flexibility in execution. The “Lean” Classics “Lean startups” focus on finding product-to-market fit through a process of rapid product development and quick iterations based on customer feedback. It’s the opposite of porting MBA techniques to the startup world—and much more effective. Here is our short list of smart, interesting books about starting a business: The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win by Steven Gary Blank Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan that Works by Ash Maurya The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development: A Cheat Sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits How to Start a Business by Jason Nazar and Rochelle Bailis (eBook) A LEAN BUSINESS PLAN TEMPLATE The goal of a lean business planning process should be to produce three outputs.

They are much riskier and more complex than changing your position in the marketplace or tweaking your internal model, but they’re unavoidable (especially if you’re listening to the marketplace rather than trying to force yourself on it). A pivot isn’t a leap; it’s a change of direction about a fixed point—your core capabilities. In late 2009, I spoke at the New York City Lean Startup Meetup. My topic was “The Pivot,” but the best summary of my position actually came from a member of the audience, who boiled it down to three words: “Pivot, don’t Jump!” When you discover that your prior conception of “product-market fit” is off, the temptation is to leap in a completely different direction.

Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors (Simon & Schuster, 2008). Porter, Michael. Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance (Simon & Schuster, 2008). Ries, Al, and Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (McGraw-Hill Education, 2003). Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (Random House, 2011). Smart, Brad. Topgrading: The Proven Hiring and Promoting Method that Turbocharges Company Performance (Penguin, 2012). Stalk, George, and Rob Lachenauer. Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?


pages: 185 words: 43,609

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel, Blake Masters

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Andrew Wiles, Andy Kessler, Berlin Wall, clean tech, cloud computing, crony capitalism, discounted cash flows, diversified portfolio, do well by doing good, don't be evil, Elon Musk, eurozone crisis, Fairchild Semiconductor, heat death of the universe, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, life extension, lone genius, Long Term Capital Management, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, minimum viable product, Nate Silver, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, PalmPilot, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, power law, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Singularitarianism, software is eating the world, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, strong AI, Suez canal 1869, tech worker, Ted Kaczynski, Tesla Model S, uber lyft, Vilfredo Pareto, working poor

Journalists analogize literal survival in competitive ecosystems to corporate survival in competitive markets. Hence all the headlines like “Digital Darwinism,” “Dot-com Darwinism,” and “Survival of the Clickiest.” Even in engineering-driven Silicon Valley, the buzzwords of the moment call for building a “lean startup” that can “adapt” and “evolve” to an ever-changing environment. Would-be entrepreneurs are told that nothing can be known in advance: we’re supposed to listen to what customers say they want, make nothing more than a “minimum viable product,” and iterate our way to success. But leanness is a methodology, not a goal.

Jobs, Steve, 5.1, 5.2, 6.1, 6.2, 14.1 Jones, Jim Joplin, Janis justice Justice Department, U.S. Kaczynski, Ted Karim, Jawed Karp, Alex, 11.1, 12.1 Kasparov, Garry Katrina, Hurricane Kennedy, Anthony Kesey, Ken Kessler, Andy Kurzweil, Ray last mover, 11.1, 13.1 last mover advantage lean startup, 2.1, 6.1, 6.2 Levchin, Max, 4.1, 10.1, 12.1, 14.1 Levie, Aaron lifespan life tables LinkedIn, 5.1, 10.1, 12.1 Loiseau, Bernard Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) Lord of the Rings (Tolkien) luck, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4 Lucretius Lyft MacBook machine learning Madison, James Madrigal, Alexis Manhattan Project Manson, Charles manufacturing marginal cost marketing Marx, Karl, 4.1, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 Masters, Blake, prf.1, 11.1 Mayer, Marissa Medicare Mercedes-Benz MiaSolé, 13.1, 13.2 Michelin Microsoft, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 4.1, 5.1, 14.1 mobile computing mobile credit card readers Mogadishu monopoly, monopolies, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 5.1, 7.1, 8.1 building of characteristics of in cleantech creative dynamism of new lies of profits of progress and sales and of Tesla Morrison, Jim Mosaic browser music recording industry Musk, Elon, 4.1, 6.1, 11.1, 13.1, 13.2, 13.3 Napster, 5.1, 14.1 NASA, 6.1, 11.1 NASDAQ, 2.1, 13.1 National Security Agency (NSA) natural gas natural secrets Navigator browser Netflix Netscape NetSecure network effects, 5.1, 5.2 New Economy, 2.1, 2.2 New York Times, 13.1, 14.1 New York Times Nietzsche, Friedrich Nokia nonprofits, 13.1, 13.2 Nosek, Luke, 9.1, 14.1 Nozick, Robert nutrition Oedipus, 14.1, 14.2 OfficeJet OmniBook online pet store market Oracle Outliers (Gladwell) ownership Packard, Dave Page, Larry Palantir, prf.1, 7.1, 10.1, 11.1, 12.1 PalmPilots, 2.1, 5.1, 11.1 Pan, Yu Panama Canal Pareto, Vilfredo Pareto principle Parker, Sean, 5.1, 14.1 Part-time employees patents path dependence PayPal, prf.1, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 8.1, 9.1, 9.2, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 11.1, 11.2, 12.1, 12.2, 14.1 founders of, 14.1 future cash flows of investors in “PayPal Mafia” PCs Pearce, Dave penicillin perfect competition, 3.1, 3.2 equilibrium of Perkins, Tom perk war Perot, Ross, 2.1, 12.1, 12.2 pessimism Petopia.com Pets.com, 4.1, 4.2 PetStore.com pharmaceutical companies philanthropy philosophy, indefinite physics planning, 2.1, 6.1, 6.2 progress without Plato politics, 6.1, 11.1 indefinite polling pollsters pollution portfolio, diversified possession power law, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 of distribution of venture capital Power Sellers (eBay) Presley, Elvis Priceline.com Prince Procter & Gamble profits, 2.1, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 progress, 6.1, 6.2 future of without planning proprietary technology, 5.1, 5.2, 13.1 public opinion public relations Pythagoras Q-Cells Rand, Ayn Rawls, John, 6.1, 6.2 Reber, John recession, of mid-1990 recruiting, 10.1, 12.1 recurrent collapse, bm1.1, bm1.2 renewable energy industrial index research and development resources, 12.1, bm1.1 restaurants, 3.1, 3.2, 5.1 risk risk aversion Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) Romulus and Remus Roosevelt, Theodore Royal Society Russia Sacks, David sales, 2.1, 11.1, 13.1 complex as hidden to non-customers personal Sandberg, Sheryl San Francisco Bay Area savings scale, economies of Scalia, Antonin scaling up scapegoats Schmidt, Eric search engines, prf.1, 3.1, 5.1 secrets, 8.1, 13.1 about people case for finding of looking for using self-driving cars service businesses service economy Shakespeare, William, 4.1, 7.1 Shark Tank Sharma, Suvi Shatner, William Siebel, Tom Siebel Systems Silicon Valley, 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 5.1, 5.2, 6.1, 7.1, 10.1, 11.1 Silver, Nate Simmons, Russel, 10.1, 14.1 singularity smartphones, 1.1, 12.1 social entrepreneurship Social Network, The social networks, prf.1, 5.1 Social Security software engineers software startups, 5.1, 6.1 solar energy, 13.1, 13.2, 13.3, 13.4 Solaria Solyndra, 13.1, 13.2, 13.3, 13.4, 13.5 South Korea space shuttle SpaceX, prf.1, 10.1, 11.1 Spears, Britney SpectraWatt, 13.1, 13.2 Spencer, Herbert, 6.1, 6.2 Square, 4.1, 6.1 Stanford Sleep Clinic startups, prf.1, 1.1, 5.1, 6.1, 6.2, 7.1 assigning responsibilities in cash flow at as cults disruption by during dot-com mania economies of scale and foundations of founder’s paradox in lessons of dot-com mania for power law in public relations in sales and staff of target market for uniform of venture capital and steam engine Stoppelman, Jeremy string theory strong AI substitution, complementarity vs.


pages: 361 words: 81,068

The Internet Is Not the Answer by Andrew Keen

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, AltaVista, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, Bob Geldof, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Colonization of Mars, computer age, connected car, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, data science, David Brooks, decentralized internet, DeepMind, digital capitalism, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Donald Davies, Downton Abbey, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, Frederick Winslow Taylor, frictionless, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, gentrification, gig economy, global village, Google bus, Google Glasses, Hacker Ethic, happiness index / gross national happiness, holacracy, income inequality, index card, informal economy, information trail, Innovator's Dilemma, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, Kodak vs Instagram, Lean Startup, libertarian paternalism, lifelogging, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, Metcalfe’s law, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, nonsequential writing, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, Occupy movement, packet switching, PageRank, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Patri Friedman, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer rental, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, Potemkin village, power law, precariat, pre–internet, printed gun, Project Xanadu, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Solow, San Francisco homelessness, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, social web, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, Ted Nelson, telemarketer, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the long tail, the medium is the message, the new new thing, Thomas L Friedman, Travis Kalanick, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban planning, Vannevar Bush, warehouse robotics, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, work culture , working poor, Y Combinator

And to help us overcome the fear, to make it feel good to fail, FailCon invited some of Big Tech’s greatest innovators to outfail each other with tales of their losses. At FailCon, the F-word was ubiquitous among illustrious Silicon Valley speakers like Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia, the billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, and Eric Ries, the author of a bestselling handbook for Internet success called The Lean Startup. Indeed, the more uncannily prescient the investor, the more moneyed the startup entrepreneur, the bigger the influencer, the more boastfully they broadcasted their litany of failures. At FailCon, we heard about failure as the most valuable kind of education, failure as a necessity of innovation, failure as a version of enlightenment, and, most ironically, given the event’s self-congratulatory tenor, failure as a lesson in humility.

It was a question so taken for granted at evangelical events like FailCon that, amid this technology crowd, I might as well have been speaking Sanskrit or Swahili. In Silicon Valley, everyone knows the answer. Their answer is an unregulated, hyperefficient platform like Airbnb for buyers and sellers. Their answer is the distributed system of capitalism being built, unregulated cab by cab, by Travis Kalanick. Their answer is a “lean startup” like WhatsApp that employs fifty-five people and sells for $19 billion. Their answer is data factories that turn us all into human billboards. Their answer is the Internet. “It’s obviously been a success for all of us,” I explained, sweeping my hand around the room packed with fabulously wealthy failures.

,” Letters to the Editor, Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2014. 34 Nick Wingfield, “Seattle Gets Its Own Tech Bus Protest,” New York Times, February 10, 2014. 35 Packer, “Change the World.” 36 Ibid. 37 Guynn, “San Francisco Split by Silicon Valley’s Wealth.” 38 Stephanie Gleason and Rachel Feintzeig, “Startups Are Quick to Fire,” New York Times, December 12, 2013. 39 See, for example, Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (New York: Crown, 2011). 40 Quentin Hardy, “Technology Workers Are Young (Really Young),” New York Times, July 5, 2013. 41 Vivek Wadhwa, “A Code Name for Sexism and Racism,” Wall Street Journal, October 7, 2013. 42 Jon Terbush, “The Tech Industry’s Sexism Problem Is Only Getting Worse,” The Week, September 12, 2013. 43 Jessica Guynn, “Sexism a Problem in Silicon Valley, Critics Say,” Los Angeles Times, October 24, 2013. 44 Terbush, “The Tech Industry’s Sexism Problem Is Only Getting Worse.” 45 Elissa Shevinsky, “That’s It—I’m Finished Defending Sexism in Tech,” Business Insider, September 9, 2013. 46 Max Taves, “Bias Claims Surge Against Tech Industry,” Recorder, August 16, 2013. 47 Colleen Taylor, “Key Details of the Kleiner Perkins Gender Discrimination Lawsuit,” TechCrunch, May 22, 2012. 48 Alan Berube, “All Cities Are Not Created Unequal,” Brookings Institution, February 20, 2014. 49 Timothy Egan, “Dystopia by the Bay,” New York Times, December 5, 2013. 50 Marissa Lagos, “San Francisco Evictions Surge, Reports Find,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 5, 2013. 51 Carolyn Said, “Airbnb Profits Prompted S.F.


pages: 468 words: 124,573

How to Build a Billion Dollar App: Discover the Secrets of the Most Successful Entrepreneurs of Our Time by George Berkowski

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, barriers to entry, Black Swan, business intelligence, call centre, crowdsourcing, deal flow, Dennis Tito, disruptive innovation, Dunbar number, en.wikipedia.org, game design, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, growth hacking, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Jony Ive, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, loose coupling, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, minimum viable product, MITM: man-in-the-middle, move fast and break things, Network effects, Oculus Rift, Paul Graham, QR code, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, software is eating the world, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, TechCrunch disrupt, Travis Kalanick, two-pizza team, ubercab, Y Combinator

More recently, they turned down acquisition offers of $3 billion and $4 billion from Facebook and Google respectively. On average, a user uses the Snapchat app 34 times a month. That means by the end of 2013, Snapchat’s 350 million daily snap number matched the number of photos users uploaded to Facebook.28 In the true spirit of a lean startup, at the end of 2013 the team was still only around 40 people. Snapchat is still a story in progress. But the lessons are clear: it focused on a universal need, messaging, mixed it up with a true innovation, anonymity, and then focused on a great experience and performance. Designed to be touched Angry Birds is one of the most popular games – and brands – in history.

What went wrong? Most people often don’t spend anywhere near enough time talking to their prospective customers. Understanding your target users is critical – especially understanding their problems and how your app is going to solve those problems. I recommend a great book by Eric Ries called The Lean Startup. ‘Lean’ is a great adjective. It is about building your app wisely, frugally, without wasting time, without excessive costs, and maintaining a vigour and energy. In the book Ries summarises an approach to eliminate uncertainty, and inject process and rigour around developing and testing your product to make sure it resonates with your target users.

Chapter 21 Tuning and Humming At this point in your journey, revenue becomes critical. It’s not just about getting dollars in the door, though: to make it to the top of the app heap you need to have revenues that scale. Steve Blank, a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur and the father of the lean-startup movement (we mentioned this in Chapter 7: ‘Getting Lean and Mean’), explains it brilliantly in The Startup Owner’s Manual: ‘Simply put, does adding $1 in sales and marketing resource generate $2+ of revenue?’ Your goal is to create a very efficient revenue engine – and keep it evolving. You want to get more out of it than you’re putting in.


pages: 170 words: 45,121

Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug

collective bargaining, game design, Garrett Hardin, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Mark Zuckerberg, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Tragedy of the Commons

Testing reminds you that not everyone thinks the way you do, knows what you know, and uses the Web the way you do. I used to say that the best way to think about testing is that it’s like travel: a broadening experience. It reminds you how different—and the same—people are and gives you a fresh perspective on things.1 1 As the Lean Startup folks would say, it gets you out of the building. But I finally realized that testing is really more like having friends visiting from out of town. Inevitably, as you make the rounds of the local tourist sites with them, you see things about your hometown that you usually don’t notice because you’re so used to them.

Orrin, Web site, viii Holmes, Sherlock, 7 Home page cluttered, 39 designing, 84 happy talk on, 50 link to, 70 hover, 152 I–K instructions, eliminating, 51–52 Ive, Jonathan, x, 184 Jarrett, Caroline, 40, 46, 194 Jobs, Steve, x, 184 “kayak” problems, 139 Klein, Gary, 24–25 Kleiner, Art, 107 Krug’s laws of usability, 10–11, 43, 49 L Larson, Gary, 23 Lean startup, 4, 114 Lincoln, Abraham, 145 link-dominant users, 59 links, visited vs. unvisited, 190 logo. See Site ID M memorability, 159 mensch, 164 mindless choices, 42–47 mirroring, 161 mission statement, 95 mobile apps, 155 usability testing, 160 Mobile First, 147–49 muddling through, 25–27 N names, importance of, 14 navigation conventions, 64 designing, 58 lower-level, 72 persistent, 66 revealing content, 63 needless words, omitting, 48–52 new feature requests, 139 Nielsen, Jakob, xi, 54, 58–59, 96, 115, 121 noise.


pages: 199 words: 48,162

Capital Allocators: How the World’s Elite Money Managers Lead and Invest by Ted Seides

Albert Einstein, asset allocation, behavioural economics, business cycle, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data science, deliberate practice, diversification, Everything should be made as simple as possible, fake news, family office, fixed income, high net worth, hindsight bias, impact investing, implied volatility, impulse control, index fund, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Lean Startup, loss aversion, Paradox of Choice, passive investing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, risk tolerance, Sharpe ratio, sovereign wealth fund, tail risk, The Wisdom of Crowds, Toyota Production System, zero-sum game

He suggests developing clear plans, priorities, and timelines with milestones. Companies from start-ups to large corporations use the lingo KPIs, or key performance indicators, to define the milestones to achieve objectives. Scott Kupor similarly defines deliverables and asks his team what they think they will need to meet them. In his book Lean Start-Up,32 Eric Ries discusses a cycle of building, measuring, and getting feedback to iterate on product development. Patrick O’Shaughnessy uses his vision of learn, build, share, repeat to get at the same idea. When something goes wrong, good managers perceive problems as learning opportunities.

There are libraries full of management books. I picked this one because it had the most influence on me. * * * 30. Jason H, Karp on Twitter (@humankarp). 31. Charley Ellis, Capital: The Story of Long-Term Excellence, Managing People, pp. 218–219. 32. Eric Ries, The Lean Start-Up, How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Currency New York, 2011. Part 2: Investment Frameworks Alongside the tools in the toolkit, guests on the show talk in detail about their investing. Part 2 discusses the frameworks modern CIOs employ in managing the money entrusted to them.


pages: 400 words: 88,647

Frugal Innovation: How to Do Better With Less by Jaideep Prabhu Navi Radjou

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Bretton Woods, business climate, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, circular economy, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, Computer Numeric Control, connected car, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Elon Musk, fail fast, financial exclusion, financial innovation, gamification, global supply chain, IKEA effect, income inequality, industrial robot, intangible asset, Internet of things, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, late fees, Lean Startup, low cost airline, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Benioff, megacity, minimum viable product, more computing power than Apollo, new economy, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, planned obsolescence, precision agriculture, race to the bottom, reshoring, risk tolerance, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, smart grid, smart meter, software as a service, standardized shipping container, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, Tony Fadell, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, value engineering, vertical integration, women in the workforce, work culture , X Prize, yield management, Zipcar

Use just-in-time design Rather than over-engineering products with just-in-case features, companies should adopt just-in-time design. This starts with a good-enough product and incrementally adds new features based on customer feedback in a just-in-time fashion. Approaches such as agile development methodology and lean start-up, which teach companies how to fail fast, fail early and fail cheaply, can enable such just-in-time design in large firms with big R&D teams.11 Beware supply chain constraints Delays and cost escalation in innovation projects often occur because R&D teams design products without considering supply chain capabilities.

As Beth Comstock, chief marketing officer at GE, a multinational conglomerate, puts it:16 We’re constantly tinkering with our business models to get leaner and more agile and to get closer to our customers – to act small even though we’re big. Comstock believes that GE has learned four main lessons from start-ups: Keep things simple. Although GE may seem complicated from the outside, its laser-like focus on its core activity – technology – gives the company a unified sense of purpose. Work fast. GE has drawn on the lean start-up ethos to develop FastWorks, a set of tools and principles to help the firm do things more quickly and efficiently (see Chapter 7). Find solutions through multiple partnerships and ask the wider community when the firm lacks relevant expertise. Don’t be afraid of uncertainty. Many GE start-ups did not turn out as originally planned, but were useful nonetheless.

., innovation and insights director, Lion Dairy & Drinks, interview with Jaideep Prabhu, February 23rd 2014. 8Booz & Company, op. cit. 9The case study on Fujitsu’s work with farmers at Sawa Orchards in Wakayama, Japan, is based on interviews conducted by the authors with several senior executives at Fujitsu in the US and Japan. 10Booz & Company, op. cit. 11Ries, E., The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Crown Business, 2011. 12Mayhew, S., head of R&D strategy development, GSK, interview with Jaideep Prabhu, February 17th 2014. 13Cornillon, P., senior vice-president R&D, Arla Foods, interview with Jaideep Prabhu, February 28th 2014. 14Radjou, N., Transforming R&D Culture, Forrester Research, March 20th 2006. 15Scott, M., “The Payments Challenge for Mobile Carriers”, New York Times, February 26th 2014. 16Comstock, B., “We’ve learned these four lessons from startups, and we’re using them to transform GE”, LinkedIn, December 10th 2013. 17Most of the material used in this case study comes from Radjou, N. and Prabhu, J., “Beating Competitors with High-Speed Innovation”, Strategy+Business, December 18th 2013 (www.strategy-business.com). 3Principle two: flex your assets 1Anand, N. and Barsoux, J-L., Quest: Leading Global Transformations, IMD International, 2014. 2Trout, B.L., director of the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing, interview with Navi Radjou, May 9th 2014. 3“RAF jets fly with 3D printed parts”, BBC News, January 5th 2014. 4“Peter Weijmarshausen: 3D Printing”, etalks, April 2nd 2013. 5This quote from Gérard Mestrallet, CEO of GDF-Suez, is slightly adapted from its original version that appeared in his interview with a French magazine, L’Expansion, in December 2013. 6Dugan, J., Caterpillar to Expand Manufacturing and Increase Employment in the United States with New Hydraulic Excavator Facility in Victoria, Texas, Caterpillar press release, August 12th 2010. 7Wong, H., Potter, A. and Naim, M., “Evaluation of postponement in the soluble coffee supply chain: A case study”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 131, Issue 1, May 2011, pp. 355–64. 8O’Marah, K., chief content officer, SCM World, and senior research fellow at Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum, interview with Navi Radjou, March 11th 2014. 9Beasty, C., “The Chain Gang”, Destination CRM, October 2007. 10Morieux, Y., “As work gets more complex, 6 rules to simplify”, TED Talk, October 2013. 11Lopez, M., CEO, Lopez Research, interview with Navi Radjou, March 28th 2014. 12O’Connell, A., “Lego CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp on leading through survival and growth”, Harvard Business Review, January 2009. 13“The Return to Apple”, All About Steve Jobs: http://allaboutstevejobs.com/bio/longbio/longbio_08.php. 14O’Connell, op. cit. 15Francis, S., CEO, Flock Associates, and former head of Aegis Europe, interview with Jaideep Prabhu, January 27th 2014. 16This case study is adapted from an original version that appeared in French in L’Innovation Jugaad, published by Diateino in 2013.


pages: 307 words: 92,165

Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing by Hod Lipson, Melba Kurman

3D printing, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, additive manufacturing, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, DIY culture, dumpster diving, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, factory automation, Free Software Foundation, game design, global supply chain, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, lifelogging, Mars Rover, Marshall McLuhan, microcredit, Minecraft, Neal Stephenson, new economy, off grid, personalized medicine, planned obsolescence, printed gun, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, stem cell, Steve Jobs, technological singularity, TED Talk, the long tail, the market place

Benchmarking competitors might work, but it’s still uncertain. For complex products that offer lots of options and compete in constantly shifting markets, traditional modes of market research are outdated by the time the analysis is finished. Startup companies, in particular, can’t afford traditional market research tools. In his book The Lean Startup, Eric Ries suggests that companies should explore and experiment with multiple new ideas at the same time and adjust their strategies on the fly.3 Ries argues that startups should conduct a continuous steady stream of small, lean experiments. 3D printing will help companies quickly market test new products and adapt to market feedback.

As always seems to be the case, with digital products, this sort of dynamic experimentation is easier and cheaper. Data on user preferences and purchases is more readily available. For physical products, an iterative, real-time approach to testing product variables is harder to implement and user data more difficult to gather. How could Lean Startup principles be applied to a physical product? Imagine your startup sold cell phone covers. You wanted to compare one cell phone cover that had a star shaped pattern embossed into the back, and another, plainer version that didn’t. You could display both for sale and see which one was purchased more but you’d actually have to manufacture both and pay for the cost of producing two different injection molds.

Chapter 3 1 Quote from a press conference covered by VentureBeat in May 2012. http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/10/3d-systems-ceo-we-want-3d-printing-to-be-as-big-as-the-ipad/ 2 Quote from Terry’s blog, July 2012. http://wohlersassociates.com/blog/2012/07/why-most-adults-will-never-use-a-3d-printer/ Chapter 4 1 Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (New York, NY: Hyperion Press, 2008). 2 Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, The Experience Economy (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1999). 3 Eric Reis, The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. (New York, NY: Crown Publishing Group, 2011). 4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcredit Chapter 5 1 Harris L. Marcus, Joel W. Barlow, Joseph J. Beaman, and David L. Bourell, “From computer to component in 15 minutes: The integrated manufacture of three-dimensional objects.”


pages: 183 words: 49,460

Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup by Rob Walling

8-hour work day, en.wikipedia.org, fail fast, inventory management, Jeff Hawkins, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Marc Andreessen, Network effects, Paul Graham, rolodex, Salesforce, side project, Silicon Valley, social bookmarking, software as a service, Superbowl ad, web application

The Approach We’re going to look at an approach to testing your market called the Mini Sales Site. I developed this approach a few years ago after reading the 4-Hour Workweek, realizing that the author’s testing approach could be re-purposed from information and physical product testing to software products. Since then, a similar approach has been defined by the Lean Startup Methodology. I take it as a sign that we’re both on the right track. The Mini Sales Site The idea behind this approach is that if you ask visitors whether or not they would buy your product, you will wind up with inaccurate data. The only way you know if someone would try or buy your product is if they think they are really trying or buying it when they visit your sales site.

A Smart Bear (blog.asmartbear.com) – Jason Cohen grew and sold his software company. Now he gives back to the startup community by sharing his knowledge here. Steve Blank (steveblank.com) – Steve Blank is a Silicon Valley veteran, but many of his insights apply to self-funded startups. Lessons Learned (www.startuplessonslearned.com) – Eric Ries’ Lean Startup Methodology closely parallels the Micropreneur Methodology I’ve laid out in this book, and his knowledge of the startup process is unparalleled. Single Founder (www.singlefounder.com) – Mike Taber shares his insight and wisdom from 10 years in the entrepreneurial trenches. Paul Graham (www.paulgraham.com/articles.html) – Though venture-focused, Graham’s insights into the startup process are unique and powerful.


pages: 410 words: 101,260

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bluma Zeigarnik, business process, business process outsourcing, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dean Kamen, double helix, Elon Musk, emotional labour, fear of failure, Firefox, George Santayana, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, information security, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, job satisfaction, job-hopping, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, minimum viable product, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, off-the-grid, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, risk tolerance, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, The Wisdom of Crowds, women in the workforce

Lucas and Loran F. Nordgren, “People Underestimate the Value of Persistence for Creative Performance,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 109 (2015): 232–43. Daily Show cocreator Lizz Winstead: Personal interview with Lizz Winstead, February 8, 2015. minimum viable product: Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (New York: Crown, 2011). false negatives are common: Charalampos Mainemelis, “Stealing Fire: Creative Deviance in the Evolution of New Ideas,” Academy of Management Review 35 (2010): 558–78; Aren Wilborn, “5 Hilarious Reasons Publishers Rejected Classic Best-Sellers,” Cracked, February 13, 2013, www.cracked.com/article_20285_5-hilarious-reasons-publishers-rejected-classic-best-sellers.html; Berg, “Balancing on the Creative High-Wire.”

., 11–14, 113, 172, 212, 241–42 “I Have a Dream” speech of, 12, 92–93, 98–103, 113, 235 workshops of, 238–39, 241 King, Stephen, 18 King Lear (Shakespeare), 135 Klein, Gary, 53 Klosterman, Chuck, 132n Knight, Phil, 17 Koch, Helen, 157n Koch, Robert, 107 Kodak, 181 Kohlmann, Ben, 247 Komisar, Randy, 52–54, 56, 60–61, 106n Koo, Minjung, 235 Kotter, John, 76, 232 Kozbelt, Aaron, 34 Kozmo, 105 Kramer, Roderick, 178 Kunda, Ziva, 170 Kurkoski, Jennifer, 24 Kutcher, Ashron, 220–21 Land, Edwin, 19, 175–76, 181–82, 183–87, 203, 204 Last Supper, The (da Vinci), 97, 112 Lawson, James, 238 leaders, 222 Lean In (Sandberg), 85 LeanIn.Org, xi Lean Startup, The (Ries), 39n Lee, Aileen, 52, 54, 56 LeFlore, Ron, 149 Legend, John, 18 Lego building experiment, 101n Leno, Jay, 45 Leonardo da Vinci, 96–97, 112 LePine, Jeff, 81 life cycles of creativity, 108–13 Lincoln, Abraham, 23–24, 98 Emancipation Proclamation of, 24, 235 line length experiment, 224–25 Linge, Mary Kay, 160 Lion King, The, 134–35, 137–38, 247 listing positive features, 73–74 Little, Brian, 243 Littlefield, Warren, 40, 41, 44 Lockwood, Penelope, 170 Lofton, Kenny, 149 logic of appropriateness, 154, 166–67, 170 logic of consequence, 154, 165–66, 170, 253 Lord of the Rings, The (Tolkien), 172 losses, emphasizing gains versus, 232–34 Lowell, Robert, 112 Lubart, Todd, 11 Lublin, Nancy, 250 Lucy Stone League, 114 Ludwin, Rick, 44–46, 49–50, 57 Luther, Martin, 93 Luxottica, 1, 8 Ma, Jack, 172–73 MacKinnon, Donald, 100, 164 Made to Stick (Heath and Heath), 76 Magnavox Odyssey, 104 Maldives, 238 managers and bosses, 80–82 Mandela, Nelson, 172, 210 March, James, 154 March on Washington, 12, 92–93, 98–103 Margolis, Joshua, 241 Maslow, Abraham, 111 May, Brian, 18 Mayer, Marissa, 123 McAdams, Dan, 219 McCammon, Holly, 138, 141 McCrae, Robert, 48n McCune, William, 184 McDonald, Michael, 184 Mead, Margaret, 225 medicine, 207 Medina, Carmen, 62–68, 70–71, 78–82, 84–87, 89–91, 107, 247 Meena, 172 memory for tasks, 99 mentors, 171, 172 Merck, 233–34 mere exposure effect, 77–78, 137 method acting, 237–38 Meyerson, Debra, 124, 236–37 Michelangelo, 12, 13 microbiology laboratories, 184n–85n Microsoft, 20, 222 middle-status conformity effect, 82–84 Mill, Harriet Taylor, 115 Mill, John Stuart, 115 Millay, Edna St.

* The lesson here isn’t to ask customers what they want. As the famous line often attributed to Henry Ford goes: “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” Instead, creators ought to build a car and see if customers will drive it. That means identifying a potential need, designing what The Lean Startup author Eric Ries calls a minimum viable product, testing different versions, and gathering feedback. * One category of circus acts was universally disliked by managers, test audiences, and creators: clowns. It’s not a coincidence that one Seinfeld episode revolves around clowns striking fear into the hearts of adults as well as children


pages: 309 words: 96,168

Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths From the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs by Reid Hoffman, June Cohen, Deron Triff

"Susan Fowler" uber, 23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, Anne Wojcicki, Ben Horowitz, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, Broken windows theory, Burning Man, call centre, chief data officer, clean water, collaborative consumption, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data science, desegregation, do well by doing good, Elon Musk, financial independence, fulfillment center, gender pay gap, global macro, growth hacking, hockey-stick growth, Internet of things, knowledge economy, late fees, Lean Startup, lone genius, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Network effects, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, polynesian navigation, race to the bottom, remote working, RFID, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Steve Jobs, Susan Wojcicki, TaskRabbit, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, two and twenty, work culture , Y Combinator, zero day, Zipcar

In a way, your business itself could be thought of as an experiment. And for the experiment to succeed, you have to be willing to throw out—or at least challenge—what you originally believed to be true. Learning to experiment (and experimenting to learn) Eric Ries is the founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange and author of the iconic book The Lean Startup. But at twenty-five, Eric was co-founder of an unknown, unproven startup, IMVU, which built 3D avatars for social networking platforms. IMVU had a terrific business plan from the outset—Eric knows, because he wrote it. “It was fifty pages of just the most eloquent prose,” Eric says, “with data sourced from the U.S. census, and all of this analysis.

In the midst of his research, Eric left IMVU and became an advisor to other startups. He also began writing blog posts, anonymously. And eventually, these posts became the basis for his book. It arrived at exactly the right time. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, entrepreneurs needed to achieve liftoff without huge amounts of capital or years of development time. The Lean Startup has since sold more than a million copies. But more importantly, it became a handbook for a new way of doing business. I often say, “If you aren’t embarrassed by your first product release, you’ve released it too late.” Why? Because you need to test a real product with real customers as soon as possible—basically the moment you have a bare-bones version.

As they refined their deck, they also learned which investors were most likely to hear them out, and what types of advisors would give investors more confidence. Most importantly, they learned more about who they were as a company. In some pitches, “there was quite a disconnect between our mission- and goals-driven style of thinking and a more iterative Lean Startup approach.” These investors, she realized, “were not going to ever get on board with the way we were thinking, because we’ve always been and continue to be very much long-term thinkers.” Melanie and her partners did not start their entrepreneurial journey knowing everything they needed to know.


Kanban in Action by Marcus Hammarberg, Joakim Sunden

Buckminster Fuller, business logic, call centre, continuous integration, en.wikipedia.org, fail fast, index card, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kanban, Lean Startup, performance metric, place-making, systems thinking, the scientific method, Toyota Production System, transaction costs, Two Sigma

It’s a must-have for any change agent. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (Eric Ries, Crown Business, 2011, http://theleanstartup.com/book, http://amzn.com/0307887898)—This book talks about applying Lean concepts to ideas: more specifically, business ideas; and even more specifically, startup ideas. These ideas range from using the scientific method for exploration to A/B testing to validate your hypothesis. Soon after reading it, you’ll start to realize what many others have seen: Lean Startup can be applied to your business regardless of whether you’re a startup.

For example, pick up some practices from XP, like pair programming or test-driven development, to get a handle on your code quality. Or you might start looking into impact mapping and specification by example to get a grip on the early stages of your feature’s life and a make sure you’re building the right thing. In recent years, continuous delivery and the ideas behind Lean startup have become popular. These methods focus on shortening the feedback loops in your process so you can get feedback on your new features more quickly. The principles of kanban can be of great use here to help you visualize and track the quick flow of your features. In short, you’re in control of your process improvement’s speed and reach.


pages: 265 words: 70,788

The Wide Lens: What Successful Innovators See That Others Miss by Ron Adner

ASML, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Blue Ocean Strategy, book value, call centre, Clayton Christensen, Ford Model T, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Lean Startup, M-Pesa, minimum viable product, mobile money, new economy, RAND corporation, RFID, smart grid, smart meter, SoftBank, spectrum auction, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, supply-chain management, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, vertical integration

See Exubera; Inhalable insulin insulin pens, 107–8 Intel electronic health record (EHR), 121–22 WiMAX, 133 Intermediaries in adoption chain, 55, 61–62 as complementors, 38, 86 in value blueprint, 86 International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), 93 Internet, and electronic health records (EHRs), 121 iPad, 218–21 and e-book market, 100, 219 ecosystem carryover for, 218–21 market for, 218 media partners, 219–21 partner gains, fairness issue, 219–21 value blueprint, 220 iPhone, 210–17 and AT&T, 212, 214–15 App Store, 216–17 competitors, 211 ecosystem carryover for, 213–16 limitations of product, 211–12 staged expansion of, 216–17 success, reasons for, 213–19 and 3G market, 52, 211–12 timing factors, 147 value blueprint, 217 iPod, 140, 144–47 delayed entry, benefits of, 147, 156 features, 145 and iTunes, 146, 156, 164, 179, 209 staged expansion of, 209–10 success, reasons for, 144–47 timing, Jobs rationale for, 144–45, 208–9 value blueprint, 210 iTunes, and iPod success, 146, 156, 164, 179, 209 J Jobs, Steve, 144 and iPod development, 144–47, 156, 208–10 See also Apple Johnson Controls, 3 K Kaiser Permanente, electronic health records (EHRs), 131 Kapoor, Rahul, 150 Keurig coffeemaker, 29 Kindle, 95–100 digital rights management (DRM) issue, 97–98 ecosystem, benefits to, 97–99 features, 96 initial weakness, 95–96 and leadership effectiveness, 136–37 pricing, 98 as service versus device, 96–97, 134–35, 164, 178–79 versus Sony Reader, 96–97, 99–100 success, assessment of, 99–100 value blueprint, 96–99 value proposition, 96–97 King, Stephen, 89 Korris, Jim, 68–69 L Leadership basic requirements for, 117, 133, 136 core challenge, 117 digital cinema adoption, 70–71, 76, 136 versus followership, 117, 132–35 and innovation success, 5, 70–71, 76 payback period, 117, 136 qualifying for. See Leadership prism strength, assessment by followers, 133–35, 220–21 Leadership prism, 117–32 constructing by followers, 134 electronic health records (EHRs) example, 128–32 functions of, 117–18, 227 value proposition for, 118 Leaf, 169, 184 Lean start-up, 202n Lechleiter, John, 107 Levin, Julian, 71 LG, 3-D TV, 53 Librié, 90 Lonie, Susie, 196–98 M Magliano, George, 171 Mann, Alfred, 112 MannKind Corporation, inhalable insulin, 102, 105, 112 Mapping, value blueprint, 84–114 Marriott hotels, 29 Medical devices, Medtronic, 206 Medical errors, deaths related to, 118–19, 124 Medical records, electronic.

However, this also doubled the price: the Roadster battery alone costs an estimated $36,000 (the base MSRP for the 2011 Roadster is $109,000), undermining its economic attractiveness to the mainstream. * Read the epilogue to the Better Place case on p. 235. * In the world of product development, a recent movement has been toward “lean start-up,” a key technique of which is the minimum viable product (also referred to as the minimum feature set). The minimum viable product approach espouses market testing with bare-bones prototypes that allows for maximum learning from test customer feedback with the least amount of product development.


pages: 276 words: 64,903

Built for Growth: How Builder Personality Shapes Your Business, Your Team, and Your Ability to Win by Chris Kuenne, John Danner

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, asset light, Benchmark Capital, Berlin Wall, Bob Noyce, business climate, business logic, call centre, cloud computing, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Gordon Gekko, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, Mark Zuckerberg, pattern recognition, risk tolerance, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, sugar pill, super pumped, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TED Talk, work culture , zero-sum game

He is somewhat of a composite, with a Crusader-esque sense of mission for his ventures, combined with a Driver’s curiosity and confident market-sensing willingness to bet on his pattern recognition insights about emerging technology or social trends. And more recently, he’s honed an Explorer-like fascination with cracking the code of complex systems, in this case applying the lean startup framework of rigorous, iterative hypothesis-testing with customers to “evidence-based” entrepreneurship and innovation itself. As he says, “The entrepreneur who is not willing to fire the hypothesis leaves no choice but to fire themselves.” The Sponsor Dynamic: Aligning Financial and Other Supporters Crusaders may struggle in their search for the right investors because their ventures are often ahead of the current perceived market.

He was, in effect, captain of a Lewis-and-Clark-style scouting team into the then frontier of the World Wide Web—dispatching his colleagues to identify and evaluate incumbent e-commerce solutions in the market. He asked them if Sony should buy or build this new platform. Their answer: build. He then captained his team of programmers and online marketers while also running interference for them with senior management across Sony. Similar to today’s lean-startup approach, Coopersmith’s team had an early Sony web store up and running, securely accepting credit cards online within a very short time. The team was located in San Francisco, away from Sony’s more formal US headquarters culture in New York. As Chris Pinkham understood when he was cracking the code for Amazon Web Services, physical (and cultural) distance from the mother ship can be a key element of the corporate builder’s success.


pages: 244 words: 66,977

Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It by Tien Tzuo, Gabe Weisert

3D printing, Airbnb, airport security, Amazon Web Services, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, bike sharing, blockchain, Brexit referendum, Build a better mousetrap, business cycle, business intelligence, business process, call centre, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, connected car, data science, death of newspapers, digital nomad, digital rights, digital twin, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, factory automation, fake news, fiat currency, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, growth hacking, hockey-stick growth, Internet of things, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kevin Kelly, Lean Startup, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mary Meeker, megaproject, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, nuclear winter, pets.com, planned obsolescence, pneumatic tube, profit maximization, race to the bottom, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, smart meter, social graph, software as a service, spice trade, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, subscription business, systems thinking, tech worker, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, transport as a service, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, WeWork, Y2K, Zipcar

The MVP is a defining principle of cloud software development, and Kanye applied it to his music-writing process. What happens when a static product like an album turns into a fluid service like a music stream? All sorts of interesting things. Today thousands of musicians are benefiting from platforms like Patreon that give them a steady, dependable source of recurring revenue. Much like Eric Ries’s “Lean Startup” method, they’re shortening their product development cycle through experimentation, validated learning, and iteration. And they’re creating a virtuous feedback loop whereby customer responses help inform product development. By putting it out there—and letting subscribers pay for it—these musicians are successfully feeding their sales funnels without having to wait for a finished product (although I’m sure they wouldn’t put it that way!).

See Internet of Things (IOT) iPhone, 3 IT department, 129–30, 189–99 business insights and, 198 evolving IT architecture to meet subscription economy needs, 197–99 financials and, 192 legacy IT architecture, structure of and problems associated with, 189–97 pricing and packaging and, 190–91, 199 renewals and, 191 sales to different customer groups and, 191–92 subscribers/customer metrics and, 190, 198 “It Doesn’t Matter” (Carr), 83 Jankowski, Simona, 26, 27 Janzer, Anne, 130 Jaws (film), 38 JCPenney, 22 Jobs, Steve, 39, 47 Johnny Walker Blue Label, 107 Johnson, Kevin, 33 just in time inventory, 16 Kaplan, 117 Kaplan, Ethan, 30–31 Katzenberg, Jeffrey, 46 Kelly, Kevin, 111 Kern, Mac, 60–61 Kmart, 22 Komatsu, 98–99 Kramer, Kelly, 95–96 Kreisky, Peter, 78 Lah, Thomas, 85–86, 96 Lean Startup method, 48 leasing versus subscription model, for automobiles, 52–53 Lemonade, 118 Lessin, Jessica, 66, 68 Levie, Aaron, 167–68, 198–99 Life of Pablo, The (album), 48, 136–37 linear order-to-cash systems, 192–97 livestreaming, 42 LL Cool J, 101 LO3 Energy, 119 Loot Crate, 28 Lotto, Mark, 75 Lucas, George, 136 Lyft, 3, 54–55 Lynda.com, 31, 117 MacKenzie, Angus, 72 McGraw-Hill, 12–13 McKinsey, 11, 34, 98, 112–13, 165, 173, 218, 221 Macy’s, 14 Magellan Health, 115 Main, Andy, 121–22 malls, 17, 22, 34–35 Manifesto for Agile Software Development, 135–36 manufacturing industry, 100–101, 103–13 digital twins of physical machinery and, 104–6 focusing on outcomes instead of products, 106–11 future of, 111–13 margins, 15 marketing, 130–31, 143–55 experiences, communicating brand through, 145, 149 one-on-one marketing, 145–46 optimizing growth within service itself, 145 place (channels) and, 146, 147–48 pricing and packaging and, 146, 151–54 promotion and, 146, 149–51 subscriber IDs and, 146 Three Rooms mental model of storytelling and, 149–51 traditional role and techniques of, 143–44 Marketo, 190 MarketTools, 171 Marshall, John, 68 Martin-Flickinger, Gerri, 141 Mashable, 66 mass production, 37 media industry, 37–50 community, building, 43 content creation, investment in, 41 continuous innovation and, 136–37 Hollywood, historical business model of, 37–38 livestreaming, 42 mass production of movies in, 37 music industry, historical business model of, 38–39 music streaming services, 46–50 Netflix show, business model for, 41 portfolio effect and, 37, 41 streaming services and, 39–50 subscription video on demand (SVOD), 42–46 Meeker, Mary, 21 Membership Economy, The (Baxter), 29 Merry Christmas (album), 38 Metallica, 39 Metromile, 118 Microsoft, 56, 83, 89 minimum viable product, 48 ModCloth, 23 Moffett, Craig, 45 Molotov, 46 monetizing longtail content business model, 38 Money element, of PADRE operating model, 204 MOOCs (massive open online courses), 117 Mooney, Andy, 31–32 Motor Trend, 72–73, 79 MoviePass, 2 Mukherjee, Subrata, 74 multiple of three factors, for gauging reader engagement, 74 music streaming services, 46–50 BowieNet and, 47 minimum viable product and, 48 Prince’s NPG Music Club and, 47–48, 49–50 virtuous feedback loop, creating, 48–49 My Royal Canin, 118 Napster, 39 NCR, 13 negative option model, 28–30 Nest, 119 net account growth, 211–13 Netflix, 2, 3, 13, 18–19, 39, 40–41, 69, 139–40, 145, 161, 198 Newman, Nic, 69 New Relic, 166–67 newspaper industry, 65–79 ad-based business model, decline of, 66–70 digital subscribers, growth in, 65–66 enthusiast networks, 72–73 freemium model and, 76 multiple of three factors, for gauging reader engagement, 74 New York Times, subscription-first model of, 75–79 pricing agility and, 73–74 print versus digital myths, 70–71 reader’s wants and needs, prioritizing, 70–71 subscription/ad revenue mix, flipping, 75–76 New Yorker, The, 65, 66–67 New York Times, The, 65, 72–73, 75–79 Ngenic, 109–11 Nichols, Jim, 52 Nordstrom, 33 NPG Music Club, 47–48, 49–50 O’Brien, Mike, 51 Okta, 3 One Medical, 115 one-on-one marketing, 145–46 OnStar, 55–56, 148 Oracle, 4, 83, 190 Pacioli, Luca, 176–78 packaging.


Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow by Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais

anti-pattern, business logic, business process, call centre, cognitive load, continuous integration, Conway's law, database schema, DevOps, different worldview, Dunbar number, holacracy, information security, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Kanban, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kubernetes, Lean Startup, loose coupling, meta-analysis, microservices, Norbert Wiener, operational security, platform as a service, pull request, remote working, systems thinking, two-pizza team, web application

BarryOvereem.com (blog), August 7, 2015. http://www.barryovereem.com/how-i-used-the-spotify-squad-health-check-model/. Pais, Manuel. “Damon Edwards: DevOps is an Enterprise Concern” InfoQ, May 31, 2014. https://www.infoq.com/interviews/interview-damon-edwards-qcon-2014. Pais, Manuel. “Prezi’s CTO on How to Remain a Lean Startup after 4 Years.” InfoQ, October 5, 2012. https://www.infoq.com/news/2012/10/Prezi-lean-startup. Pais, Manuel, and Matthew Skelton. “The Divisive Effect of Separate Issue Tracking Tools.” InfoQ, March 22, 2017. https://www.infoq.com/articles/issue-tracking-tools. Pais, Manuel, and Matthew Skelton. “Why and How to Test Logging.” InfoQ, October 29, 2016. https://www.infoq.com/articles/why-test-logging.


pages: 302 words: 73,581

Platform Scale: How an Emerging Business Model Helps Startups Build Large Empires With Minimum Investment by Sangeet Paul Choudary

3D printing, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, business logic, business process, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, collaborative economy, commoditize, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, data science, fake it until you make it, frictionless, game design, gamification, growth hacking, Hacker News, hive mind, hockey-stick growth, Internet of things, invisible hand, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, multi-sided market, Network effects, new economy, Paul Graham, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, search costs, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social bookmarking, social graph, social software, software as a service, software is eating the world, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, TaskRabbit, the long tail, the payments system, too big to fail, transport as a service, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, Wave and Pay

INTRODUCTION Building Interaction-First Platforms Design before you optimize! Scalable and sustainable business models need to be designed before they can be optimized. Optimizing poor design just makes a poorly designed system worse. The discipline of testing and measuring, championed by the Lean Startup movement, is an extremely important one. Entrepreneurs approach solution development by testing the key hypotheses that could lead to business failure. While the discipline of testing is important, the single most important decision in testing is the choice of the hypothesis to be tested. Without clarity on the most important hypotheses, one can waste a lot of time testing irrelevant hypotheses and optimizing poor design.

Unlike single-user products, platforms must cater to multiple user roles. The core interaction defines the minimum unit of value creation and exchange that caters to the key roles on the platform. The minimum viable platform should ensure that it designs all four actions in the core interaction sufficiently to enable the end-to-end interaction. In the Lean Startup methodology, one often builds out a product by validating a set of hypotheses sequentially. Every iteration of the platform may validate a hypothesis related to one of the four actions, but it is important to ensure that all other actions are also designed into the platform. Without designing the entire interaction, it may be counterproductive to try to test a hypothesis related to an individual action.


Buy Then Build: How Acquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game by Walker Deibel

barriers to entry, Blue Ocean Strategy, book value, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, deal flow, deliberate practice, discounted cash flows, diversification, drop ship, Elon Musk, family office, financial engineering, financial independence, high net worth, intangible asset, inventory management, Jeff Bezos, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Network effects, new economy, Peter Thiel, risk tolerance, risk/return, rolodex, software as a service, Steve Jobs, subscription business, supply-chain management, Y Combinator

Try to understand the driver behind a company’s value and how to best scale it. How to accelerate it, change it, or keep it as a lifestyle business. Looking at businesses this way allows the company to tell you what the growth strategy is. This is critically important to the entire process of finding your match. In Eric Reis’ The Lean Startup, he coined the term pivot to describe changes during entrepreneurial product development. Always turning to user data and customer feedback to tweak the next iteration of the product in order to build the product the market wants and attain product-market fit. In management, this happens all the time—it just doesn’t look like a startup.

., 2012 Osterwalder, Alexander and Yves Pigneur Business model generation a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers Hoboken: Wiley 281 & Sons, 2010 Parker, Richard How to Buy a Good Business at a Great Price Fort Lauderdale:Diomo, 2013 Peters, Basil Early exits: exit strategies for entrepreneurs and angel investors (but maybe not venture capitalists). Canada: MeteorBytes, 2009. Porter, M. E. Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. New York: Free Press, 1980 Rath, Tom. StrengthsFinder 2.0 New York: Gallop Inc., 2007 Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. New York: Crown Business, 2011. Ruback, Richard and Yudkoff Royce. HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business. Harvard Business Review Press, 2017. Seligman, Martin E. P. Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being. 2013.


pages: 240 words: 78,436

Open for Business Harnessing the Power of Platform Ecosystems by Lauren Turner Claire, Laure Claire Reillier, Benoit Reillier

Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Blitzscaling, blockchain, carbon footprint, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, commoditize, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, Diane Coyle, Didi Chuxing, disintermediation, distributed ledger, driverless car, fake news, fulfillment center, future of work, George Akerlof, independent contractor, intangible asset, Internet of things, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, Metcalfe’s law, minimum viable product, multi-sided market, Network effects, Paradox of Choice, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, Peter Thiel, platform as a service, price discrimination, price elasticity of demand, profit motive, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sam Altman, search costs, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, software as a service, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, TaskRabbit, the long tail, The Market for Lemons, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, Y Combinator

Some of the difficulties for existing firms considering a transition to a platform model or add-on will be discussed in Chapter 14. Notes 1 Business model generation, with its previously mentioned business model canvas tool, is a good start. 2 Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup has become a de rigueur read for any would-be entrepreneur keen to change the world on a limited budget. See E. Ries, The Lean Startup, New York: Crown Publishing, 2011. 3 While Hilton can manage and tightly control the experience of its guests, Airbnb can only influence the experience provided by the hosts. 4 Henry Blodget, 19 January 2015, Business Insider, http://uk.businessinsider.com/uberrevenue-san-francisco-2015-1. 5 Hilton Investor Presentation, November 2015. 6 The Platform Design Toolkit 2.0, the ecosystem’s motivation matrix, by Simone Cicero, www.meedabyte.com. 7 Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky routinely tweets their nights booked milestones. 8 Alex Schultz, How to Start a Start-up, Lecture 6: Growth, Sam Altman. 9 We have seen a number of interesting implementations of Mirakl at Galeries Lafayette, Darty, Halfords and l’Equipe. 10 LoveKnitting, the marketplace for knitting yarn, patterns and needles, was initially built on Magento.


pages: 316 words: 87,486

Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Amazon Mechanical Turk, American ideology, antiwork, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Burning Man, centre right, circulation of elites, Clayton Christensen, collective bargaining, Credit Default Swap, David Brooks, deindustrialization, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial innovation, Frank Gehry, fulfillment center, full employment, George Gilder, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, high-speed rail, income inequality, independent contractor, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, mandatory minimum, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, mass immigration, mass incarceration, McMansion, microcredit, mobile money, moral panic, mortgage debt, Nelson Mandela, new economy, obamacare, payday loans, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, pre–internet, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Republic of Letters, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, union organizing, urban decay, WeWork, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, young professional

For a comprehensive list of all the Obama personnel who came from or departed to Silicon Valley, see Cecilia Kang and Juliet Eilperin, “Why Silicon Valley Is the New Revolving Door for Obama Staffers,” Washington Post, February 28, 2015. “Obama’s lean startup” is also known as “18F”; it’s a unit of the General Services Administration. See Elaine Chen, “Building Obama’s Lean Startup in America’s Biggest Bureaucracy,” TechBeacon, July 23, 2015; Jon Gertner, “Inside Obama’s Stealth Startup,” Fast Company, June 15, 2015.   3. The exchange can be watched on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8URYPna1lhw.   4. 


pages: 270 words: 79,992

The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath by Nicco Mele

4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Carvin, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, big-box store, bitcoin, bread and circuses, business climate, call centre, Cass Sunstein, centralized clearinghouse, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collaborative editing, commoditize, Computer Lib, creative destruction, crony capitalism, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, death of newspapers, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Firefox, global supply chain, Google Chrome, Gordon Gekko, Hacker Ethic, Ian Bogost, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, lolcat, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, Mohammed Bouazizi, Mother of all demos, Narrative Science, new economy, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, old-boy network, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), peer-to-peer, period drama, Peter Thiel, pirate software, public intellectual, publication bias, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, satellite internet, Seymour Hersh, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, social web, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, Ted Nelson, Ted Sorensen, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, uranium enrichment, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, Zipcar

A full 172 government agencies and subagencies participate, releasing their data online. This would appear to be a substantial platform that citizens and the private sector can build upon. And in the entire United States, a country rife with innovation and an appetite for experimentation, where The $100 Startup, The Lean Startup, and The Startup of You were all best-selling titles, a country where an estimated 30,000 new companies are started every year,26 where more than 600 apps are submitted to the Apple iTunes App Store daily27—how many apps over three years have been written for Data.gov? Just 236 apps have been developed for citizens; 1,264 apps have been developed by government agencies either for use by citizens or by other government agencies.

. … All you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging.35 This way of thinking in software design has a long pedigree—back to the “scratch your own itch” of Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar, but more recently in the best-selling The Lean Startup, whose core admonition is to arrive at the minimum viable product as quickly as possible. It’s a compelling vision for running a software company or even an online services company. But does it work as an approach to government? Not so much. As Gary Wolf puts it in the Wired profile: His cause is not helped by the fact that if the Craigslist management style resembles any political system, it is not democracy but rather a low-key popular dictatorship. … Its inner workings are obscure, it publishes no account of its income or expenses, it has no obligation to respond to criticism, and all authority rests in the hands of a single man.36 I don’t mean to single out Newmark.


pages: 291 words: 90,771

Upscale: What It Takes to Scale a Startup. By the People Who've Done It. by James Silver

Airbnb, augmented reality, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, blockchain, business process, call centre, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, data science, DeepMind, DevOps, family office, flag carrier, fulfillment center, future of work, Google Hangouts, growth hacking, high net worth, hiring and firing, imposter syndrome, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, Network effects, pattern recognition, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, software as a service, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, WeWork, women in the workforce, Y Combinator

CHAPTER 8 ‘Build a talent pipeline’, ‘Offer employee equity’ and ‘Beware title inflation’. Index Ventures’ Director of Talent Dominic Jacquesson has 19 tips on how to scale talent. One of the most difficult adjustments founders face, particularly in the immediate aftermath of raising their Series A round, is the change of mindset from ‘lean startup’ mode to one where they’re suddenly required to go hell for leather on growth, argues Index Ventures’ Director of Talent, Dominic Jacquesson. And this attitudinal shift is felt particularly keenly in recruitment. ‘They have to go from being super-tight and efficient on hiring, and really holding back by doing everything as far as possible themselves, to suddenly having several million in the bank and being told [by investors] to ramp up recruitment to enable them to scale successfully,’ he says.

But for founders of other types of digital business, what are the signals entrepreneurs should be looking for when it comes to deciding where to open their first overseas offices? ‘The first thing you’re looking for is product/market fit,’ replies Corstorphine. ‘And I don’t believe you need to set up an operation or office on the ground in a market just to see whether you’re starting to achieve product/market fit or not. In lean-startup principles you would chuck the product out there, you would push it a little bit, you might spend a little bit of money on advertising just to try to get some traffic to your site. Then you’d test it; product/market fit tends to be measurable primarily in terms of retention, but also activation metrics.


pages: 324 words: 89,875

Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy by Alex Moazed, Nicholas L. Johnson

3D printing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, altcoin, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, barriers to entry, basic income, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, commoditize, connected car, disintermediation, driverless car, fake it until you make it, future of work, gig economy, hockey-stick growth, if you build it, they will come, information asymmetry, Infrastructure as a Service, intangible asset, Internet of things, invisible hand, jimmy wales, John Gruber, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Metcalfe’s law, money market fund, multi-sided market, Network effects, PalmPilot, patent troll, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, pets.com, platform as a service, power law, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social graph, software as a service, software is eating the world, source of truth, Startup school, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, the medium is the message, transaction costs, transportation-network company, traveling salesman, Travis Kalanick, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, white flight, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator

The idea of first-mover advantage was so powerful that, according to technology columnist Kevin Maney at USA Today, “it could instantly win a startup millions of dollars in financing, boatloads of publicity and board members who seemed, for a moment anyway, important.”33 Be the first to take over any new business category on the Web and it was yours, or so the thinking went. The idea of first-mover advantage took a hit after the dot-com bubble burst, but it still lives on today. Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur and one of the founders of the Lean Startup movement, called first-mover advantage “an idea that just won’t die.”34 In the past, part of the problem was that this concept was applied to businesses that didn’t have any real network effects and very little sustainable advantage, even if they were to succeed. Pets.com and Kozmo.com are both examples from the dot-com era.

Morgan, 23, 234 Kalanick, Travis, 102, 134, 230 Kantorovich, Leonid, 52–53 Keynes, John Maynard, 107 Kickstarter, 30, 77–78, 114, 183 Kozmo.com, 64, 175 Krugman, Paul, 64, 67 LakePlace.com, 130 Lange, Oskar, 61, 63, 71, 73 Lazaridis, Mike, 7–11 Lean Startup movement, 175 Lending Club, 46, 77–78, 113–14, 215, 231 Lenovo, 23, 210 Lessin, Sam, 122–23 linear business model: competition and, 68, 74–75; connection and, 112, 114; data and, 100; defined, 240; explained, 22–24; investment and, 81–82; legal issues and, 213; market size and, 93; monopolies and, 103; platforms and, 29, 31–33, 109–11, 116, 192, 215; privacy and, 108; Samsung and, 212; supply chain, 24–25; transactions and, 116–17; U-shaped economies of scale curve for, 60; value and, 39, 84–85, 152, 231; zero-marginal-cost and, 85–89 LinkedIn, 17–18, 30, 46, 82, 87, 118, 120–21, 155, 190, 206, 224 Linux, 33–35, 139, 234 liquidity, 121, 130, 132, 135, 181, 192, 199, 240 local knowledge, 54–55, 59, 70, 73 Lyft, 30, 45, 121, 127, 152, 181, 186, 194, 199, 205–6, 216 Ma, Jack, 96–98, 227 margins, 89–90, 93, 95 market size, 87–88, 93 matching intention, 41–42, 47, 241 matchmaking: collaborative filtering, 134–35; commoditization and, 46; core transactions and, 47, 126; creating rules and standards, 136–38; explained, 126; measuring success, 135–36; overview, 132–33; preventing unintended consequences, 143–46; Twitter and, 138–43; Uber and, 133–34; Yahoo and, 135–36 McLuhan, Marshall, 51 MDLIVE, 80 “Meaning of Competition, The” (Hayek), 53 Medium, 41–42, 116, 125, 181 MeeGo, 1–2 Mehta, Apoorva, 147–49 Metcalfe’s Law, 168–70, 175, 183, 241 Metromile, 206 Microsoft, 1, 3, 15, 18, 29–31, 35, 62, 68, 99, 106–7, 180–81, 196 MIT, 62, 165 mobile technology, 65, 67 monetary subsidies: attracting high-value users, 199–200; cooperating with industry incumbents, 196–97; providing security through large, up-front investment, 196; providing single-user utility, 201; targeting user groups, 200–1 monopolies: business model and, 97–99; competition and, 105–8; government-sponsored, 74–75; old vs. new, 100–3; overview, 95–97; platform capitalism, 99–100 Moore, Gordon, 61 Moore’s Law, 61, 174 Motorola, 10, 210–12 MySpace, 144, 162–65, 167, 169, 172–76, 179–80, 183 Navani, Girish, 79–80 Net neutrality, 18 Netflix, 100 network ecosystem, 69 network effects ladder: collaboration, 184–85; communication, 183; community, 185–86; connection, 183; curation, 183–84; diagram, 182; overview, 182–83 Nokia, 1–8, 11, 14–15, 81, 106 Nosek, Luke, 131 Obama, Barack, 130–31 Omidyar, Pierre, 21–22, 27 on-demand, 29, 32, 45, 80, 90, 147, 150, 194, 220, 222, 228 Open Handset Alliance (OHA), 10 open source, 10, 33–36, 38, 78, 107, 220, 234 OpenTable, 89–90, 201, 222 opt-ins: double, 43, 118–19, 122, 152–53, 165, 241; single, 118–20 Oracle, 23, 79 PayPal, 18, 37, 74, 131–32, 149, 159, 194, 214 perfect information, 36, 52–54 Pets.com, 20–22, 27, 29, 32, 64, 175 Pinterest, 30, 82, 106, 181–82 Pishevar, Shervin, 160 platforms: anatomy of, 39–41; competition between, 99–100, 103, 106, 222; computing, 32; costs, 36–37; definition, 29; design, 46–47; examples, 29–31; exchange, 41, 43–44; expansion of markets, 103–5; industry, 32; maker, 41, 44; matching intention and, 41–43; monopolies, 99–101; platform capitalism, 99–100; product, 32; as service, 32; types, 43–46 Porter, Michael, 57–60, 69, 72, 86, 97–98, 110, 112, 131, 242 Preston, Dan, 206 Preston-Warner, Tom, 35 privacy, 108, 155, 174, 179, 229 processing power, 29, 61–63, 65–67, 70, 233 product features: acting as producer, 197–98; attracting high-value users, 199–200; providing single-user utility, 201; tapping into existing network, 198; targeting user groups, 200–1 profitability, 22, 29, 107, 211 ProGit, 36 QQ, 19, 154, 218 QWERTY keyboards, 8, 11 Rakuten, 30 recommendations, 100, 116 Red Cross, 132 Red Hat, 33–34 Redpoint Ventures, 120, 138 Reidman, Hoff, 78 repeat business, 91–92 reputation, 96, 100, 107, 116, 129, 144–45, 154, 160, 164, 174, 177–78, 180, 183–84 Research in Motion (RIM), 7–15; see also BlackBerry restaurants, 89–90, 201, 225; see also GrubHub; OpenTable rewards, 115–16 Riedel, Josh, 144 Road to Serfdom (Hayek), 53 Roberts, Matthew, 90 Rubin, Andy, 10 rules and standards, 136–38 Salesforce, 79 Samsung, 10, 84, 94, 211–12, 231 Sandberg, Sheryl, 139 SAP, 79 Sarver, Ryan, 138–41, 145 Scoble, Robert, 191 search, 6, 18, 37, 45–46, 73, 95, 97–99, 105–7, 116, 130, 133, 135–36, 154, 196, 206, 208, 219–22, 233; see also Alibaba; Baidu; Google showrooming, 50 simplicity, 122–23, 147 Skype, 18, 42, 114 smartphones Snapchat, 30, 38, 81–82, 114, 191, 201 Social Finance (SoFi), 30, 231 social networking, 18, 35, 43, 46, 67, 74, 81, 118–22, 142, 153, 161, 163–67, 170, 172–74, 176, 189–90, 194, 198, 200–1, 213, 221, 224, 235 software as a service (SaaS), 23, 33, 79, 85, 227 software development kit (SDK), 13–14 SoundCloud, 77 Spotify, 184, 203–4 Square, 18, 30 Standard Oil, 22, 100–2, 107 startups, 15, 22, 30–31, 46, 74, 77, 80, 83–85, 97, 107, 120–21, 129–30, 147, 156, 172, 175, 177, 184–85, 190–92, 195, 197, 205, 219, 223, 231, 235 Steel, Anna, 151–52 storage, 66, 68, 79 Super Bowl ads, 20 supply chain, 4, 18, 22–26, 29, 69, 89 Symbian, 1–2, 4, 32 Taobao.


pages: 94 words: 26,453

The End of Nice: How to Be Human in a World Run by Robots (Kindle Single) by Richard Newton

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, adjacent possible, Black Swan, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Clayton Christensen, crowdsourcing, deliberate practice, digital divide, disruptive innovation, fail fast, fear of failure, Filter Bubble, future of work, Google Glasses, growth hacking, Isaac Newton, James Dyson, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, lateral thinking, Lean Startup, lolcat, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, move fast and break things, Paul Erdős, Paul Graham, reality distortion field, recommendation engine, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, social intelligence, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Tyler Cowen, Y Combinator

The team of founders – typically two or three people at the outset – sell a small percentage of their business to the program in return for a small amount of cash plus the intense mentoring, coaching, resources, access to investors and relevant industry experts and potential customers. “Fail harder” urges a poster tacked to one wall. Others ask of you: “Move Fast and Break Things” and “What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?”. In start-up-land, failure has become a component of the methodology for success. The Lean Startup, a book that codifies the start-up business approach, has become the management textbook for building success on failure. “You need to create a discipline to enable you to fail and learn fast,” said its author, Eric Ries. “A management discipline for failure.” The success and reputation of accelerators is such that in 2012 the business publication Forbes ran an article headlined: “Would you rather get into Y-Combinator, 500 Start-Ups, TechStars… or Harvard Business School?”


pages: 125 words: 28,222

Growth Hacking Techniques, Disruptive Technology - How 40 Companies Made It BIG – Online Growth Hacker Marketing Strategy by Robert Peters

Airbnb, bounce rate, business climate, citizen journalism, content marketing, crowdsourcing, digital map, fake it until you make it, Google Glasses, growth hacking, Hacker News, Jeff Bezos, Lean Startup, Menlo Park, Network effects, new economy, pull request, revision control, ride hailing / ride sharing, search engine result page, sharing economy, Skype, social bookmarking, TaskRabbit, turn-by-turn navigation, Twitter Arab Spring, ubercab

Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future PR, Marketing, and Advertising. Portfolio, 2013. Maurya, Ash. Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works. O’Reilly Media, 2012. McClure, Dave. “Startup Metrics 4 Pirates.” Slideshare presentation at www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pirates-nov-2012 Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Crown Business, 2011. Schranz, Thomas. Growth Engineering 101: A Step-by-Step Guide for Founders, Product Managers and Marketers. (See www.blossom.io/growth-engineering) Vilner, Yoav. “Growth Jacking 101: Read This to Become a Magician.” www.ranky.co/growth-hacking-101-read-become-magician/ Yongfook, Jon. “21 Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics.” yongfook.com/actionable-growth-hacking-tactics.html Suggestions / Reviews I really hope you liked the book and found it useful.


pages: 362 words: 99,063

The Education of Millionaires: It's Not What You Think and It's Not Too Late by Michael Ellsberg

affirmative action, Black Swan, Burning Man, corporate governance, creative destruction, do what you love, financial engineering, financial independence, follow your passion, future of work, hiring and firing, independent contractor, job automation, knowledge worker, lateral thinking, Lean Startup, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, means of production, mega-rich, meta-analysis, new economy, Norman Mailer, Peter Thiel, profit motive, race to the bottom, Sand Hill Road, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, social intelligence, solopreneur, Steve Ballmer, survivorship bias, telemarketer, Tony Hsieh

As I spoke with Max, overlooking the sea, a friend of Max’s spotted him and walked up to us. Max introduced us: “Hey Michael, this is Trevor. He’s also an entrepreneur who’s leaving school.” “Leaving school?” Trevor cut in as if to correct an insulting slight. “I’ve already left school!” Trevor Owens had left NYU during his senior year to help build The Lean Startup Machine (http://theleanstartupmachine.com), a series of intensive boot camps designed to promote entrepreneurialism and train entrepreneurs in the business principles of “lean thinking.” I had never been on a cruise before. The series was originally the brainchild of Elliott Bisnow, who had left Wisconsin to pursue his dreams.

See Meaningful work, creating Ilovemarketing.com Institute for Integrative Nutrition Intelligence, practical versus academic Internet marketing guru online presence, building and self-created business and self-education YourName.com, importance of Investments, bootstrapper’s method IQ, and success IronPort Iteration velocity John Paul Mitchell Systems Johnson, Cameron as college non-graduate success, evolution of Jong, Erica Kaufman, Josh Kawasaki, Guy Keillor, Garrison Kennedy, Dan as college non-graduate direct-response marketing Kerkorkian, Kirk Kern, Frank as college non-graduate direct-response marketing on power of selling success, evolution of Kiyosaki, Robert mentor of on power of selling Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Knowledge workers, digital Marxism Komisar, Randy on safety versus risk La Flamme, Jena Cheng sales coaching as college non-graduate Deida relationship training direct-response marketing, use of success, evolution of Lalla, Annie and Eben Pagan Langan, Chris LaPorte, Danielle, success, evolution of Laugh-O-Gram Leadership definitions of and impact on many as new marketing as skill of success Lean Startup Machine Lerer, Ben Levchin, Max Leve, Brett Lifelong learning Linchpin concept Listening, importance of Loucks, Vernon Louis Marx and Company Luck, and success Lupton, Amber Lynda Limited McDermid, Hitch Mailer, Norman Maister, David Making a difference.


pages: 416 words: 100,130

New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World--And How to Make It Work for You by Jeremy Heimans, Henry Timms

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, algorithmic management, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, battle of ideas, benefit corporation, Benjamin Mako Hill, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, British Empire, Chris Wanstrath, Columbine, Corn Laws, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, death from overwork, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, future of work, game design, gig economy, hiring and firing, holacracy, hustle culture, IKEA effect, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, job satisfaction, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Jony Ive, Kevin Roose, Kibera, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Minecraft, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, Occupy movement, post-truth, profit motive, race to the bottom, radical decentralization, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, rolodex, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, sharing economy, side hustle, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Snapchat, social web, subscription business, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, TED Talk, the scientific method, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, web application, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

She built on these successes through partnerships with organizations like Local Motors, the first-of-its kind new power car company we’ll profile in the next chapter, to crowd-source product development challenges to engineers, coders, and scientists, both online and in microfactories across the United States. Within GE, Comstock called on Eric Ries, author of the popular book The Lean Startup, to consult on a new way to encourage and speed up the company’s internal innovation and product design efforts and quickly incorporate early customer feedback. This led to the creation of the FastWorks program, which has now trained over 40,000 of GE’s leaders. FastWorks is leading a shift toward experimentation and prototyping, nudging norms at a company whose stock price has been in long-term decline and that some say has become too big to innovate.

Her success in leading GE: Forbes, “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women,” Forbes, July 2017. She chalked up early wins: GrabCAD, “GE Jet Engine Bracket Challenge,” GrabCAD Community, July 2017. www.grabcad.com. The winner was a young: Ibid. Within GE, Comstock called: Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Business (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2011). This led to the creation: GE, “GE//FastWorks,” Innovation Benchmark, March 11, 2016. A project to create a digital wind farm: GE, “GE 2015 Integrated Summary Report,” 2015, p. 19.


pages: 344 words: 96,020

Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success by Sean Ellis, Morgan Brown

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Ben Horowitz, bounce rate, business intelligence, business process, content marketing, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, dark pattern, data science, DevOps, disruptive innovation, Elon Musk, game design, gamification, Google Glasses, growth hacking, Internet of things, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, minimum viable product, multi-armed bandit, Network effects, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, software as a service, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, subscription business, TED Talk, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, working poor, Y Combinator, young professional

In reality, their success was driven by the methodical, rapid-fire generation and testing of new ideas for product development and marketing, and the use of data on user behavior to find the winning ideas that drove growth. If this iterative process sounds familiar, it’s likely because you’ve encountered a similar approach in agile software development or the Lean Startup methodology. What those two approaches have done for new business models and product development, respectively, growth hacking does for customer acquisition, retention, and revenue growth. Building on these methods was natural for Sean and other start-up teams, because the companies that Sean advised and others that developed the method were stacked with great engineering talent familiar with the methods, and because the founders were inclined to apply a similar approach to customer growth as the engineers applied to their software and product development.

Building on these methods was natural for Sean and other start-up teams, because the companies that Sean advised and others that developed the method were stacked with great engineering talent familiar with the methods, and because the founders were inclined to apply a similar approach to customer growth as the engineers applied to their software and product development. Central to agile development is increasing the speed of development, working in short “sprints” of coding, and regularly testing and iterating on the product over time. The Lean Startup adopted the practice of rapid development and frequent testing, and added the practice of getting a minimum viable product out on the market and into the hands of actual users as soon as possible, to get real user feedback and establish a viable business. Growth hacking adopted the continuous cycle of improvement and the rapid iterative approach of both methods and applied them to customer and revenue growth.


pages: 332 words: 97,325

The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's Most Exclusive School for Startups by Randall Stross

affirmative action, Airbnb, AltaVista, always be closing, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Burning Man, business cycle, California gold rush, call centre, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, don't be evil, Elon Musk, Hacker News, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, index fund, inventory management, John Markoff, Justin.tv, Lean Startup, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, medical residency, Menlo Park, Minecraft, minimum viable product, Morris worm, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, QR code, Richard Feynman, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social graph, software is eating the world, South of Market, San Francisco, speech recognition, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Startup school, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, TaskRabbit, transaction costs, Y Combinator

It was about a twenty-minute drive from where the posh offices of venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road were concentrated, near Stanford, on the leafy west side of Menlo Park. The neighborhood of Pioneer Way belonged to a separate galaxy. YC sat among small manufacturers, and auto repair and body shops. The architecture in the neighborhood was strictly no-frills utilitarian—a good setting for lean startups. YC was there every other winter until 2009, when Graham and Livingston decided to make the Valley their permanent home and run the program there for both the winter and summer batches.4 Two years after YC’s founding, a seed fund named TechStars sprang up in Boulder, Colorado. It presented the first real competition to Y Combinator.

Between the two, they had five children who were five years old or younger. To reduce expenses, the two families decided to share one rental house. What was available and within their budget was a 1,600-square-foot house that was far smaller than either family had in Birmingham. This meant that the founders were living and working in the close quarters typical of the lean startup—their office was a remodeled toolshed that sat in their tiny yard—made even closer by the fact that their families were living in the same confined space, too. Chris Steiner of Aisle50, whose home was in Chicago, also elected to come out with his wife and three-year-old son. His cofounder, Riley Scott, who was married and had a one-year-old, was already living in the Valley.


pages: 425 words: 112,220

The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture by Scott Belsky

23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Anne Wojcicki, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Ben Horowitz, bitcoin, blockchain, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, cryptocurrency, data science, delayed gratification, DevOps, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, endowment effect, fake it until you make it, hiring and firing, Inbox Zero, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, NetJets, Network effects, new economy, old-boy network, Paradox of Choice, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, private spaceflight, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, slashdot, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, subscription business, sugar pill, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, the medium is the message, Tony Fadell, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, uber lyft, WeWork, Y Combinator, young professional

Facebook’s infamous “move fast and break things” mantra, which graces everything from posters to coasters around Facebook’s campus, establishes a mind-set in technology and start-ups that the best path forward is always the fastest one, even when it’s reckless. This line of thought has inspired countless practices for how to manage projects, conduct meetings, and develop new products. The “lean start-up” methodology, which became a playbook on how to build a product efficiently, was popularized by Eric Ries’s book by the same name and has since spread beyond the start-up world and into the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies. And for good reason! The bulky, slow processes that have long inhibited launches and learning in big companies were overdue for an overhaul.

., 199–202 founder-product fit, 256 Founders, 126 Four Hour Body, The (Ferriss), 283 free radicals, 137–39 French Revolution, 200, 201 friction, 37–39, 210, 371, 372 Fried, Jason, 90 fringe, 58 frugality, 140–42 Game of Thrones, 270 Gates, Bill, 295 Gebbia, Joe, 88–89, 311 General Electric (GE), 125, 130, 143, 327 Getable, 356–57 Gibson, William, 257 Giffon, Jeremy, 294 Gigerenzer, Gerd, 285 Gilbert, Dan, 196–97 Glei, Jocelyn, 181 goals, long-term, 26–27, 66, 299, 304, 350 Godin, Seth, 297, 298, 337–38 Goldberg, Dave, 39 Goldman Sachs, 125, 143, 240–41, 341 Google, 24, 25, 60, 67, 83, 93, 101, 139, 189, 239, 366–67 Maps, 210 Project Aristotle, 122 Trends, 301–2 government and politics, corporate, 46–48 grafting talent, 119–25 Graham, Paul, 193 Grant, Adam, 39 Grant, Angela, 108 grit, 62–63 Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (Duckworth), 62 groups, 38–39, 107, 203–4 Gunatillake, Rohan, 360 Gurley, Bill, 79, 311 Gut Feelings (Gigerenzer), 285 hardship, 38, 39 Harvard Business Review, 39, 250 Harvard Business School, 117, 122, 160, 214, 262 Hashemi, Sam, 164–65 Hastings, Reed, 83–84, 126 HBO, 270 Heiferman, Scott, 168, 243–44 Higa, James, 141 Hindu theology, 374 hiring: adversity and, 110–11 discussions and, 112–13 diversity and, 106–9, 110 and initiative vs. experience, 103–5 of polarizing people, 114–15 and resourcefulness vs. resources, 100–102 talent and, 119–25 Hogan-Brun, Gabrielle, 107–8 Homebrew, 294, 359 honeymoon phase, 209 Hope, Bradley, 306, 307 Horowitz, Ben, 29–30 House Party, 265 humility, 56, 193, 331, 350 passion and, 248–50 Huxley, Aldous, 204 Hyer, Tim, 356–57 identity, 358–60, 362–63 if-onlys, 74 ignorance, 308–9 Illustrator, 10, 144, 162, 270 imagination, 326–28, 336 immune system: of society, 35, 36, 60 of team, 116–18, 119, 127 impact, 31 Improv Everywhere, 113 incrementalism, 207, 242–44, 289 influence, and credit, 330–32 information-gap theory, 272 initiative vs. experience, in hiring, 103–5 innovation, 57, 60, 102, 106–7, 118, 143, 183, 204, 250 inbred, 245–46 mistakes and unexpected in, 324–25 insecurity work, 66–67, 68 Instagram, 36, 44, 174, 189, 227, 235–36, 335, 349 institutions, 354 intention, 175 internet, 258 intuition, 294–96, 300–304, 321 inverted-U behavior, 272–73 investment, 78, 290 iPad, 48, 250, 306 iPhone, 63, 250, 273, 374 iPod, 63, 295, 374 Jaffe, Eric, 272 Jenks, Patty, 84 Jobs, Steve, 40–41, 63, 64, 141, 295 Johnstone, Ollie, 222 Jones, Malcolm, 104 Journal of Experimental Psychology, 228 Joymode, 295 June, 226–27 Jung, Carl, 56, 115 Kalina, Noah, 190 Kalmikoff, Jeffrey, 267–68 Kane, Becky, 229 Kaplan, Stanley, 358–59 Kay, Alan, 308 Kerr, Steve, 125 King, Stephen, 220 Klout, 295 Krop, 187 Laja, Peep, 162 language, multilingualism and, 107–9 laziness, vanity, and selfishness, 235–37 LCD Soundsystem, 92 leaders, leadership, 127, 147, 205, 277, 331 delegation and, 166–69 internal marketing and, 158–60 70/20/10 model for development of, 125 as stewards vs. owners, 258–61 timing and, 288–89 “lean start-up” methodology, 194 learning, 63–64, 366–67 LearnVest, 65–66 Lehrer, Jonah, 272 Levie, Aaron, 83, 224 Levo League, 73 LeWitt, Sol, 58 life expectancy, 26 Lightroom, 270 Linguanomics: What Is the Market Potential of Multilingualism? (Hogan-Brun), 107 LinkedIn, 181, 258 listening, 321 lists, 374 living and dying, 26, 368–69, 373–75 Livingston, Jessica, 101–2 local maxima, 242, 243–44, 289 Loewenstein, George, 272 long-term goals, 26–27, 66, 299, 304, 350 Loup Ventures, 35 Louvre Pyramid, 200–202 Lyft, 191 Macdonald, Hugo, 37–38 Macworld, 295 Maeda, John, 107, 186, 308, 354 magic of engagement, 273 Making Ideas Happen (Belsky), 159, 190, 222 Managed by Q, 221 Marcus Aurelius, 39 market-product fit, 256 Marquet, David, 167 Mastercard, 275, 303–4 Match.com, 259 Maupassant, Guy de, 201 maximizers, 229, 284–85 McKenna, Luke, 217 McKinsey & Company, 72 Meerkat, 265 meetings, 44, 78, 176 Meetup, 168, 243–44 Mehta, Monica, 26 merchandising, internal, 158–60 metrics and measures, 28, 29, 297–99 microwave ovens, 325 middle, 1, 3–4, 7–8, 14–15, 20, 40, 209, 211, 375 volatility of, 1, 4, 6, 8, 12, 14–16, 21, 209 milestones, 25, 27, 31, 40 minimum viable product (MVP), 86, 186, 195, 252 Minshew, Kathryn, 72–73 misalignment, 153–55 mistakes, 324–25, 336 Mitterand, François, 201 Mix, 256 Mizrahi, Isaac, 324 mock-ups, 161–63 momentum, 29 money, raising, 30–31, 102 Monocle, 37 Morin, Dave, 273 motivation, 24 multilingualism, 107–9 Murphy, James, 92 Muse, The, 72, 73 Musk, Elon, 168, 273 Muslims, 302–3 Myspace, 89, 187–88, 349 mystery, 271–73 naivety, 308–9 Narayan, Shantanu, 289 narrative and storytelling, 40–42, 75, 87, 271 building, before product, 255–57 culture and, 134–36 National Day of Unplugging, 328 naysayers, 295 negotiation, 286–87 Negroponte, Nicholas, 107 Nest, 63 Netflix, 83–84, 126 networking, 138–39 networks, 258–61, 283, 284, 320–21 Newsweek, 38 New York Times, 63, 122, 275 Next, 141 99U Conference, 9–10, 26, 138, 167, 181, 197, 220, 221, 360 no, saying, 282–84, 285, 319, 371, 372 Noguchi, Isamu, 141 noise and signal, 320–21 Northwestern Mutual, 66 novelty, and utility, 240–41 NPR, 196 “NYC Deli Problem,” 174 Oates, Joyce Carol, 192 OBECALP, 59–61 obsession, 104–5, 229, 313, 326 Oculus, 350 Odeo, 36 office space, 140–41 openness, 308–9, 350 OpenTable, 79 opinions, 64, 305–7, 317 opportunities, 282–85, 319, 324, 325, 371 optimization, 8, 14–15, 16, 93–338 see also product, optimizing; self, optimizing; team, optimizing Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy (Sandberg and Grant), 39 options, managing, 284–85 organizational debt, 178–79 outlasting, 90 outsiders, 88, 105 Page, Larry, 60 Pain, 59 Paperless Post, 239 Paradox of Choice, The: Why More Is Less (Schwartz), 284 parallel processing, 33 parenting, 371, 372 Partpic, 120 passion, empathy and humility before, 248–50 path of least resistance, 85 patience, 78, 80–85, 196 cultural systems for, 81–82, 85 personal pursuit of, 84–85 structural systems for, 83–84, 85 “pebbles” and “boulders,” 182, 268 Pei, I.


pages: 199 words: 43,653

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal

Airbnb, AltaVista, behavioural economics, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, dark pattern, en.wikipedia.org, fail fast, framing effect, game design, gamification, Google Glasses, growth hacking, Ian Bogost, IKEA effect, Inbox Zero, invention of the telephone, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Lean Startup, lock screen, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Oculus Rift, Paradox of Choice, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, QWERTY keyboard, reality distortion field, Richard Thaler, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social bookmarking, TaskRabbit, telemarketer, the new new thing, Toyota Production System, Y Combinator

How can you implement the concepts in this book to measure your product’s effectiveness in building user habits? Through my studies and discussions with entrepreneurs at today’s most successful habit-forming companies, I’ve distilled this process into what I term Habit Testing. It is a process inspired by the “build, measure, learn” methodology championed by the lean start-up movement. Habit Testing offers insights and actionable data to inform the design of habit-forming products. It helps clarify who your devotees are, what parts (if any) of your product are habit forming, and why those aspects of your product are changing user behavior. Habit Testing does not always require a live product; however, it can be difficult to draw clear conclusions without a comprehensive view of how people are using your system.


pages: 165 words: 46,133

The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph by Ryan Holiday

British Empire, collective bargaining, Deng Xiaoping, fear of failure, Lean Startup, minimum viable product, Nelson Mandela, reality distortion field, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Steve Jobs

Pressfield, Stephen. The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle. New York: Rugged Land, 2002. ———. Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life’s Work. New York: Black Irish Entertainment, 2012. ———. The Warrior Ethos. New York: Black Irish Entertainment, 2011. Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. New York: Crown Business, 2011. Roosevelt, Theodore. Strenuous Epigrams of Theodore Roosevelt. New York. HM Caldwell, 1904. Sandlin, Lee. “Losing the War.” Chicago Reader. March 6, 1997. ———.


Mastering Private Equity by Zeisberger, Claudia,Prahl, Michael,White, Bowen, Michael Prahl, Bowen White

Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, backtesting, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, book value, business process, buy low sell high, capital controls, carbon credits, carried interest, clean tech, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate raider, correlation coefficient, creative destruction, currency risk, deal flow, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, diversification, diversified portfolio, family office, fixed income, high net worth, impact investing, information asymmetry, intangible asset, junk bonds, Lean Startup, low interest rates, market clearing, Michael Milken, passive investing, pattern recognition, performance metric, price mechanism, profit maximization, proprietary trading, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, statistical arbitrage, time value of money, transaction costs, two and twenty

Finally, the entrepreneur’s declining equity stake following each round of investment shows clearly the impact of dilution when raising external funding.13 Some founders question the merit of giving up substantial amounts of equity in return for venture funding. They often consider an alternative: growing the company organically without external funding by conservatively managing the early stage with their own capital and trying to quickly grow revenue. With the rise of the “lean start-up”14 model (and the availability of low-cost funding sources, i.e., crowd funding), this alternative path has become a realistic option for certain business models.15 What Is a Venture Capitalist? By Brad Feld, Managing Director, Foundry Group One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is to assume that all VCs are the same.

Kaplan, S.N. and Lerner, J. (2010) It Ain’t Broke: The Past, Present, and Future of Venture Capital, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, 22: 36–47. Kauffman Foundation (2012) We Have Met the Enemy—and He is Us, http://www.kauffman.org/∼/media/kauffman_org/research%20reports%20and%20covers/2012/05/we_have_met_the_enemy_and_he_is_us.pdf. Reis, E. (2008) The Lean Startup. Wasserman, Naom, Nazeeri, Furqan and Anderson, Kyle (2012) A “Rich-vs.-King” Approach to Term Sheet Negotiations, HBS. For detailed discussion on term sheets please refer to: Feld, Brad, Venture Deals and his related blog http://www.askthevc.com/. Further reading on angel investing, incubators and accelerators: Accelerators vs.


pages: 165 words: 50,798

Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything by Peter Morville

A Pattern Language, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Arthur Eddington, augmented reality, Bernie Madoff, bike sharing, Black Swan, business process, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, Computer Lib, disinformation, disruptive innovation, folksonomy, holacracy, index card, information retrieval, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, iterative process, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Hawkins, John Markoff, Kanban, Lean Startup, Lyft, messenger bag, minimum viable product, Mother of all demos, Nelson Mandela, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, Project Xanadu, quantum entanglement, RFID, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Schrödinger's Cat, self-driving car, semantic web, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, single source of truth, source of truth, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, Ted Nelson, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, uber lyft, urban planning, urban sprawl, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, zero-sum game

ix Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows (2008), p.14. x Meadows (2008), p.157. xi Meadows (2008), p.5. xii The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (1961), p.376. xiii Jacobs (1961), p.376. xiv The Agile Manifesto, http://agilemanifesto.org. xv The Machine That Changed the World by James Womack (1990), p.56. xvi The Lean Startup by Eric Ries (2011). xvii Meadows (2008), p.170. xviii Should Isle Royale Wolves Be Reintroduced by John Vucetich (2012), p.130. xix The Perfect Mile by Neal Bascomb (2005). xx Philosophy of the Buddha by Christopher W. Gowans (2003), p.29. xxi Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana (2011), p.151.


We Are the Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet's Culture Laboratory by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 4chan, Aaron Swartz, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, bitcoin, blockchain, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, compensation consultant, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, East Village, eternal september, fake news, game design, Golden Gate Park, growth hacking, Hacker News, hiring and firing, independent contractor, Internet Archive, Jacob Appelbaum, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Joi Ito, Justin.tv, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, Lean Startup, lolcat, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, medical residency, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Palm Treo, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, QR code, r/findbostonbombers, recommendation engine, RFID, rolodex, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, semantic web, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, slashdot, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, social web, South of Market, San Francisco, Startup school, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Streisand effect, technoutopianism, uber lyft, Wayback Machine, web application, WeWork, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator

That abrasive hue would become YC’s signature color, the color of many cups and plates and the Eames shell chairs in the YC kitchen, and the orange-red that PG often chose for his standard dress of polo shirt. What was left when Graham removed from startup funding all the things he disliked was very close to the concept that was becoming known as “the lean startup.” It entails using existing technologies to iterate fast, initially ignoring certain “best practices” commonly associated with running a functional company, such as scalability, internationalization, and heavy-duty security. He advised the founders, instead of being thorough, to release early versions of their work that were lightweight enough to evolve.

They wanted to be inclusive of a variety of individuals’ search strategies, because the way a programmer might look for a code file on his hard drive would be very different from how an artist might find a photograph. In other words, they got caught up in building something sturdy that would scale broadly and smoothly. They never launched a product. Huffman, by contrast, was very good at following the lean-startup doctrine. Stone described Huffman’s practical approach as: “Okay, what’s the most important thing that we can do right now?” Huffman wrote to-do lists, from which he’d methodically start at the top, most important item, and work his way down. Other lists were titled “where do I spend time?” and “what is the problem I’m trying to solve?”


pages: 207 words: 57,959

Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries by Peter Sims

Alan Greenspan, Amazon Web Services, Black Swan, Clayton Christensen, complexity theory, David Heinemeier Hansson, deliberate practice, discovery of penicillin, endowment effect, fail fast, fear of failure, Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Bilbao, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, Lean Startup, longitudinal study, loss aversion, meta-analysis, PageRank, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, scientific management, Silicon Valley, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, systems thinking, TED Talk, theory of mind, Toyota Production System, urban planning, Wall-E

Agile methods are not yet mainstream. Companies like Salesforce.com have had successful migrations, while other software companies struggle to implement them. Small teams are critical, as is training and experience with the methods of which there are many variations, including Scrum, Ruby on Rails, Lean Startup, Customer Development Model, and so on. In general, Silicon Valley Internet entrepreneurs use agile methods because they can, and often must given their constraints. Creativity research on problem finding versus problem solving: Interview with Dr. R. Keith Sawyer, Washington University. The Creative Vision: A Longitudinal Study of Problem Finding in Art, by J.


pages: 209 words: 63,649

The Purpose Economy: How Your Desire for Impact, Personal Growth and Community Is Changing the World by Aaron Hurst

Abraham Maslow, Airbnb, Alvin Toffler, Atul Gawande, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, big-box store, bike sharing, Bill Atkinson, business process, call centre, carbon footprint, citizen journalism, commoditize, corporate social responsibility, crowdsourcing, disintermediation, do well by doing good, Elon Musk, Firefox, General Magic , glass ceiling, greed is good, housing crisis, independent contractor, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, jimmy wales, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, longitudinal study, Max Levchin, means of production, Mitch Kapor, new economy, pattern recognition, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, QR code, Ray Oldenburg, remote working, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, underbanked, women in the workforce, work culture , young professional, Zipcar

The Purpose Economy 2.0 In the early spring of 2013, I sat down and drafted The Purpose Economy. I shared my insights and stories from the front lines to help inspire and enable everyone to embrace, build, and own the new economy. The book was set to be published in September of the same year, but after a 15-minute conversation with Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, we switched gears and decided to treat the manuscript as a beta version and not as the finished book. We printed 2,000 copies and sent them to pioneers and thought leaders in the new economy. We asked them to contribute their ideas and observations about the Purpose Economy, the book, and the concept.


pages: 223 words: 60,936

Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding From Anywhere by Tsedal Neeley

Airbnb, Boycotts of Israel, call centre, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, discrete time, Donald Trump, future of work, global pandemic, iterative process, job satisfaction, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, lockdown, mass immigration, natural language processing, remote work: asynchronous communication, remote working, Silicon Valley, social distancing

It’s about what it takes to truly work together while being apart. Whether she’s writing about digital tools or the importance of social cues and context, Tsedal Neeley has created a guide that will help any organization withstand challenges and realize its full potential over the long-term.” —Eric Ries, CEO of Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE), author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way “Suddenly, the business world has changed fundamentally for all of us. With remote work remaining a necessity for many industries going forward, Tsedal’s book is a must-read for any manager navigating the challenges and benefits of a virtual workforce.” —Liz Cheng, general manager of television at GBH and WORLD Channel “Whether it’s part of a long-term strategy or simply thrust upon you due to the pandemic, a remote work program requires a systematic approach to succeed.


pages: 278 words: 74,880

A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Carbon Emissions by Muhammad Yunus

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", active measures, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, clean water, conceptual framework, crony capitalism, data science, distributed generation, Donald Trump, financial engineering, financial independence, fixed income, full employment, high net worth, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Lean Startup, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, microcredit, new economy, Occupy movement, profit maximization, Silicon Valley, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, urban sprawl, young professional

The organization is led by a global team of young professionals from eight countries and from many different walks of life—graduate students and consultants, journalists and graphic designers, including people who have worked for Google, McKinsey & Company, and Grameen Bank, along with Rhodes and Fulbright scholars, engineers, and poets. Their chief mission is to identify, recruit, and incubate some of the next generation of social business leaders. Young people who are selected to become Y&Y fellows are guided through a unique curriculum that teaches them lean startup principles that help them build successful social businesses that are sustainable and strategically sound. Over a six-month period, Y&Y fellows attend biweekly webinars given by business experts, connect with a global network of change-makers and professional mentors, and receive relevant content and personalized support from the Y&Y team.


pages: 278 words: 70,416

Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success by Shane Snow

3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, attribution theory, augmented reality, barriers to entry, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, David Heinemeier Hansson, deliberate practice, disruptive innovation, Elon Musk, fail fast, Fellow of the Royal Society, Filter Bubble, Ford Model T, Google X / Alphabet X, hive mind, index card, index fund, Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, Neil Armstrong, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, popular electronics, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Ruby on Rails, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, seminal paper, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, social bookmarking, Steve Jobs, superconnector, vertical integration

I’m not being contrarian for the sake of it; I’m hoping to spark lateral thinking when it comes to success, indeed to show that lateral thinking is how the most successful people have always made it. In the following chapters, I’ll explain why kids shouldn’t be taught multiplication tables, where the fashionable “fail fast and fail often” mantra of the Lean Startup movement breaks down, and how momentum—not experience—is the single biggest predictor of business and personal success. I’ll debunk our common myths about mentorship and paying dues. And I’ll show why, paradoxically, it’s easier to build a huge business than a small one. Good fortune and talent are both ingredients of success, but like any recipe, they can be substituted with clever alternatives.


pages: 361 words: 76,849

The Year Without Pants: Wordpress.com and the Future of Work by Scott Berkun

barriers to entry, Big Tech, blue-collar work, Broken windows theory, en.wikipedia.org, Firefox, future of work, Google Hangouts, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, Kanban, Lean Startup, lolcat, lone genius, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, post-work, remote working, Results Only Work Environment, Richard Stallman, Seaside, Florida, side project, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the map is not the territory, The Soul of a New Machine, Tony Hsieh, trade route, work culture , zero-sum game

—Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president, Microsoft “Most talk of the future of work is just speculation, but Berkun has actually worked there. The Year Without Pants is a brilliant, honest, and funny insider's story of life at a great company.” —Eric Ries, author, New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup “WordPress.com has discovered a better way to work, and The Year Without Pants allows the reader to learn from the organization's fun and entertaining story.” —Tony Hsieh, author, New York Times bestseller Delivering Happiness, and CEO, Zappos.com, Inc. “The Year Without Pants is a highly unusual business book, full of ideas and lessons for a business of any size, but a truly insightful and entertaining read as well.


pages: 238 words: 73,824

Makers by Chris Anderson

3D printing, Airbnb, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Apple II, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Buckminster Fuller, Build a better mousetrap, business process, carbon tax, commoditize, company town, Computer Numeric Control, crowdsourcing, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deal flow, death of newspapers, dematerialisation, digital capitalism, DIY culture, drop ship, Elon Musk, factory automation, Firefox, Ford Model T, future of work, global supply chain, global village, hockey-stick growth, hype cycle, IKEA effect, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, inventory management, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Menlo Park, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, planned obsolescence, private spaceflight, profit maximization, QR code, race to the bottom, Richard Feynman, Ronald Coase, Rubik’s Cube, Scaled Composites, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, slashdot, South of Market, San Francisco, SpaceShipOne, spinning jenny, Startup school, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, Whole Earth Catalog, X Prize, Y Combinator

The academic way to put this is that global supply chains have become “scale-free,” able to serve the small as well as the large, the garage inventor and Samsung. The non-academic way to say it is this: nothing is stopping you from making anything. The people now control the means of production. Or, as The Lean Startup author Eric Reis puts it, Marx got it wrong: “It’s not about ownership of the means of production, anymore. It’s about rentership of the means of production.” Such open supply chains are the mirror of Web publishing and e-commerce a decade ago. The Web, from Amazon to eBay, revealed a Long Tail of demand for niche physical goods; now the democratized tools of production are enabling a Long Tail of supply, too.


pages: 237 words: 74,109

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener

autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, basic income, behavioural economics, Blitzscaling, blockchain, blood diamond, Burning Man, call centre, charter city, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark triade / dark tetrad, data science, digital divide, digital nomad, digital rights, end-to-end encryption, Extropian, functional programming, future of work, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, growth hacking, guns versus butter model, housing crisis, Jane Jacobs, job automation, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, means of production, medical residency, microaggression, microapartment, microdosing, new economy, New Urbanism, Overton Window, passive income, Plato's cave, pull request, rent control, ride hailing / ride sharing, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Social Justice Warrior, social web, South of Market, San Francisco, special economic zone, subprime mortgage crisis, systems thinking, tech bro, tech worker, technoutopianism, telepresence, telepresence robot, union organizing, universal basic income, unpaid internship, urban planning, urban renewal, warehouse robotics, women in the workforce, work culture , Y2K, young professional

I asked where the first blank-slate city would be, expecting him to say somewhere in California—outside of Sacramento, maybe, somewhere within commuting distance that would release some of the pressure from San Francisco. Central America, he said. Maybe El Salvador. “Somewhere with people who want to work hard, and don’t want to have to deal with crime,” he explained. I stared, with great interest, at the bottom of my beer bottle. “The idea is to follow lean-startup methodology. The city will start small, like an early startup that has to cater to the first hundred users, rather than the first million.” I asked how he planned to scale up, and regretted it as soon as he gave me the answer: shipping containers. To live in? I asked. What about community? People didn’t come from nowhere.


pages: 600 words: 72,502

When More Is Not Better: Overcoming America's Obsession With Economic Efficiency by Roger L. Martin

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, autism spectrum disorder, banking crisis, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, butterfly effect, call centre, cloud computing, complexity theory, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, do what you love, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Glass-Steagall Act, High speed trading, income inequality, industrial cluster, inflation targeting, Internet of things, invisible hand, Lean Startup, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, open economy, Phillips curve, Pluto: dwarf planet, power law, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The future is already here, the map is not the territory, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, Toyota Production System, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, two-sided market, uber lyft, very high income, Vilfredo Pareto, zero-sum game

For this reason, policy makers need to encourage capital providers to pursue longer-term rewards from the companies in which they invest and to utilize more—and more intelligent—long-term proxies for measuring the companies’ progress. Here we can see that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently set a good example with its approval of the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE) as the nation’s fourteenth stock exchange, in May 2019. Founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur and best-selling author of The Lean Startup, Eric Ries, the LTSE will explicitly require companies that list on the exchange and investors that trade on it to follow practices that are oriented toward the longer term.19 While the exact listing rules had not been made public as of this writing, they hold the promise of an alternative stock market for both companies and investors who would like to think longer term.


pages: 270 words: 79,180

The Middleman Economy: How Brokers, Agents, Dealers, and Everyday Matchmakers Create Value and Profit by Marina Krakovsky

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Al Roth, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Black Swan, buy low sell high, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Credit Default Swap, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, deal flow, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, experimental economics, George Akerlof, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, income inequality, index fund, information asymmetry, Jean Tirole, Joan Didion, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kenneth Arrow, Lean Startup, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market microstructure, Martin Wolf, McMansion, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, moral hazard, multi-sided market, Network effects, patent troll, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, pez dispenser, power law, real-name policy, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Sand Hill Road, search costs, seminal paper, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, social graph, supply-chain management, TaskRabbit, the long tail, The Market for Lemons, the strength of weak ties, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, two-sided market, Uber for X, uber lyft, ultimatum game, Y Combinator

His stake in the company is now valued at tens of millions of dollars; perhaps most important, his association with Dropbox also burnished Nozad’s name as someone whom investors and entrepreneurs should take seriously, enabling him to go from angel investor to founding partner in his own VC firm, Pejman Mar Ventures, thus formalizing his middleman role between young entrepreneurs and people with funds to invest. Pejman Mar Ventures is currently housed in an airy loft in downtown Palo Alto, just a few blocks from the Medallion Rug Gallery, where Nozad began building his network. The decor inside—spare, hip, and modern, with no Persian rug in sight—perfectly matches the youthful “lean start-up” set to which the firm caters. In some ways, of course, Pejman Mar is just like any venture capital firm, pooling money from investors, called limited partners, and divvying it up among the start-up companies in its portfolio. When a portfolio company does well, going public or getting acquired for a large sum, the venture firm and its LPs share in the profits.


pages: 294 words: 82,438

Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World by Donald Sull, Kathleen M. Eisenhardt

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Apollo 13, asset allocation, Atul Gawande, barriers to entry, Basel III, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, carbon footprint, Checklist Manifesto, complexity theory, Craig Reynolds: boids flock, Credit Default Swap, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, democratizing finance, diversification, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Glass-Steagall Act, Golden age of television, haute cuisine, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, late fees, Lean Startup, Louis Pasteur, Lyft, machine translation, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Nate Silver, Network effects, obamacare, Paul Graham, performance metric, price anchoring, RAND corporation, risk/return, Saturday Night Live, seminal paper, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Startup school, statistical model, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, transportation-network company, two-sided market, Wall-E, web application, Y Combinator, Zipcar

Annie Case diligently researched simple rules for crowdfunding at Indiegogo and Kickstarter, while Lauryn Isford and Florence Koskas clarified how simple rules work in shared-economy companies. Luke Pappas provided revealing baseball insights. Although their material did not make the final version of the book, Kathy appreciates the terrific efforts of Andrea Sy on Wikipedia and Michael Heinrich on the Lean Startup. Their work will shine somewhere—soon. Finally, successive cohorts of master’s students in Kathy’s course, Strategy in Technology-based Companies (MS&E 270), challenged and immeasurably sharpened the conceptual foundation of simple rules. For Kathy, the book could not have happened without the help of family members, friends, and colleagues.


pages: 282 words: 81,873

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley by Corey Pein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anne Wojcicki, artificial general intelligence, bank run, barriers to entry, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, Build a better mousetrap, California gold rush, cashless society, colonial rule, computer age, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, deep learning, digital nomad, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, Extropian, fail fast, fake it until you make it, fake news, gamification, gentrification, gig economy, Google bus, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Greyball, growth hacking, hacker house, Hacker News, hive mind, illegal immigration, immigration reform, independent contractor, intentional community, Internet of things, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Larry Ellison, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, life extension, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, obamacare, Parker Conrad, passive income, patent troll, Patri Friedman, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer lending, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, platform as a service, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-work, public intellectual, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, RFID, Robert Mercer, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Ross Ulbricht, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Scientific racism, self-driving car, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Singularitarianism, Skype, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, social software, software as a service, source of truth, South of Market, San Francisco, Startup school, stealth mode startup, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, technological singularity, technoutopianism, telepresence, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, unit 8200, upwardly mobile, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, X Prize, Y Combinator, Zenefits

He said he had previously cofounded “a company for value added services for the mobile industry,” whatever that meant, only to fall in with “a bad person” who suckered him into some fraudulent scheme. “That evil person stole 3 million dollars from me, that I earned during my whole lifetime,” Aron wrote. After the sob story, he got back to business. What is the budget that you think that is appropriate for this lean startup, bearing in mind that the professional force will be rewarded mostly with options/stocks in the company? Aha! Here was a sign that Aron had some real experience running a tech company: He didn’t want to pay his workers. I knew that greedy people were the easiest to scam. I wondered how Aron had lost $3 million.


pages: 286 words: 87,401

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Reid Hoffman, Chris Yeh

"Susan Fowler" uber, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, autonomous vehicles, Benchmark Capital, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, blockchain, Bob Noyce, business intelligence, Cambridge Analytica, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, database schema, DeepMind, Didi Chuxing, discounted cash flows, Elon Musk, fake news, Firefox, Ford Model T, forensic accounting, fulfillment center, Future Shock, George Gilder, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, Greyball, growth hacking, high-speed rail, hockey-stick growth, hydraulic fracturing, Hyperloop, initial coin offering, inventory management, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, late fees, Lean Startup, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Network effects, Oculus Rift, oil shale / tar sands, PalmPilot, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, Quicken Loans, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, software is eating the world, speech recognition, stem cell, Steve Jobs, subscription business, synthetic biology, Tesla Model S, thinkpad, three-martini lunch, transaction costs, transport as a service, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, uber lyft, web application, winner-take-all economy, work culture , Y Combinator, yellow journalism

For example, Charles Schwab was able to build his eponymous financial empire by leveraging the deregulation of brokerage commissions to launch a discount brokerage. Frequently, you won’t be able to fully validate product/market fit before you commit to building a company. But you should try. As authors and entrepreneurs, we’re huge fans of Eric Ries and his lean start-up methodology. It is an excellent process for systematically tackling risk. But the fact is that most start-ups don’t follow that process; instead, their chosen experiment is “Do we succeed or run out of money?” The best way for a small, resource-strapped team to assess potential strategies is to leverage what we dubbed “network intelligence” in our previous book, The Alliance.


pages: 315 words: 85,791

Technical Blogging: Turn Your Expertise Into a Remarkable Online Presence by Antonio Cangiano

23andMe, Albert Einstein, anti-pattern, bitcoin, bounce rate, cloud computing, content marketing, en.wikipedia.org, Hacker News, John Gruber, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, lolcat, Network effects, Paradox of Choice, revision control, Ruby on Rails, search engine result page, slashdot, software as a service, web application

They blog because they feel so strongly about their ideas that they want to convince others to believe in the same principles, with the ultimate goal of improving the field they work in. Steve Yegge is one example of such a blogger (http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com). You’ll find other examples if you search for blogs dedicated to methodologies, such as Agile development or Lean startups. Communication and well-defined ideas are at the heart of most professions. So if you are a programmer, blogging really stands to make you a better programmer. If you are a CEO, blogging can make you a better businessperson. Focus your writing on what you want to improve upon and not just on what you know best.


pages: 328 words: 84,682

The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power by Michael A. Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer, David B. Yoffie

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, asset light, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, business logic, Cambridge Analytica, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, collective bargaining, commoditize, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, deep learning, Didi Chuxing, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, Firefox, general purpose technology, gig economy, Google Chrome, GPS: selective availability, Greyball, independent contractor, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kevin Roose, Lean Startup, Lyft, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Metcalfe’s law, move fast and break things, multi-sided market, Network effects, pattern recognition, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, recommendation engine, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, Susan Wojcicki, TaskRabbit, too big to fail, transaction costs, transport as a service, Travis Kalanick, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, Vision Fund, web application, zero-sum game

But when traditional barriers to entry are low, even in markets where companies feel protected because of their strong network effects, new entrants can still enter the business on the supply side and fragment the user base, preventing a market from tipping toward one big winner. The unique dilemma for many platform businesses is that the initial cost of market entry can be very low because of advances in digital technology, which we will discuss in more detail below. In the world of lean start-ups, the amount of capital required to develop, produce, and distribute a new product or service, or even a new platform, is a fraction of what it cost ten or twenty years ago. In the gig economy, it has been especially easy to start new transaction platforms like handyman services (e.g., Handy or TaskRabbit).


pages: 330 words: 91,805

Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism by Robin Chase

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Kessler, Anthropocene, Apollo 13, banking crisis, barriers to entry, basic income, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), bike sharing, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, business climate, call centre, car-free, carbon tax, circular economy, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, commoditize, congestion charging, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deal flow, decarbonisation, different worldview, do-ocracy, don't be evil, Donald Shoup, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Eyjafjallajökull, Ferguson, Missouri, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, frictionless, Gini coefficient, GPS: selective availability, high-speed rail, hive mind, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, Kinder Surprise, language acquisition, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, low interest rates, Lyft, machine readable, means of production, megacity, Minecraft, minimum viable product, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, openstreetmap, optical character recognition, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer model, Post-Keynesian economics, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, TaskRabbit, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Turing test, turn-by-turn navigation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, vertical integration, Zipcar

Despite dozens of earnest ridesharing start-up attempts in the United States, none have succeeded (although I believe in time, demand will come around in the United States). The moral? If there isn’t demand for what you are creating, nothing I have to say in this chapter will help. Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur who began the Lean Startup movement, captured our experience succinctly in a blog post titled “No Plan Survives First Contact with Customers.”3 GoLoco’s stumbling effort, with its back-and-forth interplay between founder vision and real-world experience, accurately depicts the importance of the “kernel,” the first phase of experimentation.


pages: 284 words: 92,688

Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble by Dan Lyons

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Blue Bottle Coffee, call centre, Carl Icahn, clean tech, cloud computing, content marketing, corporate governance, disruptive innovation, dumpster diving, Dunning–Kruger effect, fear of failure, Filter Bubble, Golden Gate Park, Google Glasses, Googley, Gordon Gekko, growth hacking, hiring and firing, independent contractor, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, new economy, Paul Graham, pre–internet, quantitative easing, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, software as a service, South of Market, San Francisco, Stanford prison experiment, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, TED Talk, telemarketer, tulip mania, uber lyft, Y Combinator, éminence grise

Suddenly there was a new business model: Grow fast, lose money, go public. That model persists today. It’s a simple racket. Venture capitalists pump millions of dollars into a company. The company spends some of that money coding up a “minimum viable product,” or MVP, a term coined by Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, which has become a bible for new tech companies, and then pumps enormous sums into acquiring customers—by hiring sales reps, marketers, and public relations people who can get publicity, put on flashy conferences, and generate hype—brand and buzz, as HubSpot calls it. The losses pile up, but the revenue number rises.


pages: 318 words: 91,957

The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy by David Gelles

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Adam Neumann (WeWork), air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Boeing 737 MAX, call centre, carbon footprint, Carl Icahn, collateralized debt obligation, Colonization of Mars, company town, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, disinformation, Donald Trump, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fulfillment center, gig economy, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, income inequality, inventory management, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, junk bonds, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Milken, Neil Armstrong, new economy, operational security, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, QAnon, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, remote working, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, self-driving car, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Ballmer, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, TaskRabbit, technoutopianism, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, WeWork, women in the workforce

And then it can be a $1 trillion company. But you’re not going to get your quarterly returns for the next five years. Do you want to do that?” The alternative, he explained, was a slow march to irrelevancy. “The answer was always like, ‘No. We want our dividend,’ ” Dignan said. Eric Ries, a consultant and author of The Lean Startup, was also brought in to work with Immelt and his team. Ries, an expert in entrepreneurial culture, was there to try to jump-start innovation inside the company. That meant trying new things, being willing to fail, and possibly investing in technologies that might not immediately pay off. Inside GE, however, Ries found a deep-seated aversion to risk taking.


pages: 359 words: 96,019

How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story by Billy Gallagher

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Swan, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, computer vision, data science, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, El Camino Real, Elon Musk, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, Frank Gehry, gamification, gentrification, Google Glasses, Hyperloop, information asymmetry, Jeff Bezos, Justin.tv, Kevin Roose, Lean Startup, Long Term Capital Management, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, Nelson Mandela, Oculus Rift, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, power law, QR code, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skeuomorphism, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, sorting algorithm, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, TechCrunch disrupt, too big to fail, value engineering, Y Combinator, young professional

Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2016. Moritz. Michael. Return to the Little Kingdom: How Apple and Steve Jobs Changed the World. New York: Overlook Press, 2009. Reis, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. New York: Crown Business, 2011. Roose, Kevin. Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2014. Rose, Todd. The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness.


pages: 340 words: 100,151

Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It by Scott Kupor

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, asset allocation, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, Blue Bottle Coffee, carried interest, cloud computing, compensation consultant, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, discounted cash flows, diversification, diversified portfolio, estate planning, family office, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, index fund, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, Lean Startup, low cost airline, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Myron Scholes, Network effects, Paul Graham, pets.com, power law, price stability, prudent man rule, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, Startup school, the long tail, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, VA Linux, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Given the chance, any one of those ideas could well become a reality that changes the way we live, and those are ideas we need to support. I believe Scott’s book is destined to change the equation when it comes to who gets funded. It’s leading us into a fairer, more robust future, and I can’t think of a wiser person to take us there. Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Introduction I am writing this book from my office on Sand Hill Road, the hallowed Silicon Valley street that holds as much promise for entrepreneurs as Hollywood Boulevard does for actors, Wall Street does for investment bankers, and Music Row does for country music artists.


pages: 368 words: 96,825

Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler

3D printing, additive manufacturing, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Apollo 11, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Boston Dynamics, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, company town, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deal flow, deep learning, dematerialisation, deskilling, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Exxon Valdez, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, Firefox, Galaxy Zoo, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, gravity well, hype cycle, ImageNet competition, industrial robot, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Harrison: Longitude, John Markoff, Jono Bacon, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, life extension, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, low earth orbit, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Rover, meta-analysis, microbiome, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Narrative Science, Netflix Prize, Network effects, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, optical character recognition, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, performance metric, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, rolodex, Scaled Composites, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, smart grid, SpaceShipOne, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuart Kauffman, superconnector, Susan Wojcicki, synthetic biology, technoutopianism, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, Turing test, urban renewal, Virgin Galactic, Wayback Machine, web application, X Prize, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

This is possible, in part, because the structure of exponential organizations is very different. Rather than utilize armies of employees or large physical plants, twenty-first-century start-ups are smaller organizations focused on information technologies, dematerializing the once physical and creating new products and revenue streams in months, sometimes weeks. As a result, these lean start-ups are the small furry mammals competing with the large dinosaurs—meaning they’re one asteroid strike away from world dominance. Exponential technology is that asteroid. In times of dramatic change, the large and slow cannot compete with the small and nimble. But being small and nimble requires a whole lot more than just understanding the Six Ds of exponentials and their expanding scale of impact.


pages: 397 words: 102,910

The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet by Justin Peters

4chan, Aaron Swartz, activist lawyer, Alan Greenspan, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Bayesian statistics, Brewster Kahle, buy low sell high, crowdsourcing, digital rights, disintermediation, don't be evil, Free Software Foundation, global village, Hacker Ethic, hypertext link, index card, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet Archive, invention of movable type, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Lean Startup, machine readable, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Open Library, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, profit motive, RAND corporation, Republic of Letters, Richard Stallman, selection bias, semantic web, Silicon Valley, social bookmarking, social web, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, strikebreaker, subprime mortgage crisis, Twitter Arab Spring, Vannevar Bush, Whole Earth Catalog, Y Combinator

91 You mess with the bull, you get the horns. 9 THE WEB IS YOURS At the beginning of every year, Aaron Swartz would post to his blog an annotated list of the books he had read over the previous twelve months.1 His list for 2011 included seventy books, twelve of which he identified as “so great my heart leaps at the chance to tell you about them even now.”2 The list illustrated the depth and breadth of Swartz’s interests. There was CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, by Charles Petzold (“I never really felt like I understood the computer until I read this book”); The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries (“Read it with an open mind and let it challenge you, so you can start to understand how transformative it really is”); The Pale King, an unfinished posthumous novel by David Foster Wallace, Swartz’s favorite fiction writer (“Probably less unfinished than it feels”). The list also included Franz Kafka’s The Trial, about a man caught in the cogs of a vast judicial bureaucracy, facing charges and a system that defied logical explanation.


pages: 377 words: 110,427

The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz by Aaron Swartz, Lawrence Lessig

Aaron Swartz, affirmative action, Alfred Russel Wallace, American Legislative Exchange Council, Benjamin Mako Hill, bitcoin, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brewster Kahle, Cass Sunstein, deliberate practice, do what you love, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, failed state, fear of failure, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, full employment, functional programming, Hacker News, Howard Zinn, index card, invisible hand, Joan Didion, John Gruber, Lean Startup, low interest rates, More Guns, Less Crime, peer-to-peer, post scarcity, power law, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, semantic web, single-payer health, SpamAssassin, SPARQL, telemarketer, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the scientific method, Toyota Production System, unbiased observer, wage slave, Washington Consensus, web application, WikiLeaks, working poor, zero-sum game

This book (really an excerpt from his forthcoming book) is so very, very good that it just blows me away. Issenberg tells the tale of everything I’ve been trying to say to everyone in politics, but he does it in a real-life three-act morality play that’s so good it could be a model on how to tell a story. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Ries presents a translation of the Toyota Production System to start-ups—and it’s so clearly the right way to run a start-up that it’s hard to imagine how we got along before it. Unfortunately, the book has become so trendy that I find many people claiming to swear allegiance to it who clearly missed the point entirely.


pages: 353 words: 104,146

European Founders at Work by Pedro Gairifo Santos

business intelligence, clean tech, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, deal flow, do what you love, fail fast, fear of failure, full text search, Hacker News, hockey-stick growth, information retrieval, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Joi Ito, Lean Startup, Mark Zuckerberg, Multics, natural language processing, pattern recognition, pre–internet, recommendation engine, Richard Stallman, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, subscription business, technology bubble, TED Talk, web application, Y Combinator

More people do like creating their own company. We have now eight, nine years of good funding opportunities, probably more like eight. We're going to see [if] the financial crisis we have currently has an impact on entrepreneurship or not, or on financing or not. Then it changed that you can actually start with a lean start-up. There is no need to buy big expensive hardware or software like databases. Everything that you need today is free or close to free. In the end, you only need the manpower. To get the best people, you have to attract them with more than money. I think starting, co-starting, or helping entrepreneur software developers to start their companies, I would say that this is really a challenging, new approach.


pages: 395 words: 110,994

The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford

air freight, anti-work, antiwork, Apollo 13, business intelligence, business process, centre right, cloud computing, continuous integration, dark matter, database schema, DevOps, fail fast, friendly fire, Gene Kranz, index card, information security, inventory management, Kanban, Lean Startup, shareholder value, systems thinking, Toyota Production System

“So, we now know that Allspaw and Hammond weren’t so crazy after all. Jez Humble and Dave Farley independently came to the same conclusions, and then codified the practices and principles that enable multiple deployments per day in their seminal book Continuous Delivery. Eric Ries then showed us how this capability can help the business learn and win in his Lean Startup work.” As Erik talks, he is as animated as I’ve ever seen him. Shaking his head, he looks sternly at me. “Your next step should be obvious by now, grasshopper. In order for you to keep up with customer demand, which includes your upstream comrades in Development,” he says, “you need to create what Humble and Farley called a deployment pipeline.


pages: 382 words: 114,537

On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane by Emily Guendelsberger

Adam Curtis, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Picking Challenge, autism spectrum disorder, basic income, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cognitive dissonance, company town, David Attenborough, death from overwork, deskilling, do what you love, Donald Trump, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, hive mind, housing crisis, independent contractor, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Jon Ronson, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kiva Systems, late capitalism, Lean Startup, market design, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, McJob, Minecraft, Nicholas Carr, Nomadland, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, precariat, Richard Thaler, San Francisco homelessness, scientific management, Second Machine Age, security theater, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, speech recognition, TaskRabbit, tech worker, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tony Hsieh, Toyota Production System, Travis Kalanick, union organizing, universal basic income, unpaid internship, Upton Sinclair, wage slave, working poor

Jones The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, Arlie Hochschild Blood, Sweat & Tears: The Evolution of Work, Richard Donkin False Prophets: The Gurus Who Created Modern Management and Why Their Ideas Are Bad for Business, James Hoopes The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home, Arlie Hochschild Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, Michael Hammer and James Champy Just Enough Anxiety: The Hidden Driver of Business Success, Robert H. Rosen The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Eric Ries Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work, Sarah Kessler The Job: Work and Its Future in a Time of Radical Change, Ellen Ruppel Shell On low-wage work and workers The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David K.


System Error by Rob Reich

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, AI winter, Airbnb, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, AltaVista, artificial general intelligence, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Ben Horowitz, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, decentralized internet, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, deplatforming, digital rights, disinformation, disruptive innovation, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, driverless car, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, financial innovation, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, gig economy, Goodhart's law, GPT-3, Hacker News, hockey-stick growth, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information security, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, jimmy wales, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Lean Startup, linear programming, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, minimum wage unemployment, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, move fast and break things, Myron Scholes, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, NP-complete, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, Philippa Foot, premature optimization, profit motive, quantitative hedge fund, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software is eating the world, spectrum auction, speech recognition, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, strong AI, superintelligent machines, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, The Future of Employment, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, traveling salesman, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, trolley problem, Turing test, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, union organizing, universal basic income, washing machines reduced drudgery, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, When a measure becomes a target, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, you are the product

Y Combinator—YC for short—is often referred to as a start-up “accelerator” as it not only invests in very young companies but helps to bring together small groups of entrepreneurs in “batches” to create such ventures and mentors them through the process of securing additional investment. Its standard deal is to invest $125,000 in return for 7 percent of a company, leveraging the fact that infrastructure costs for internet companies have plummeted in recent years. YC fosters a “lean start-up” mentality, where there is a push to build a minimal viable product, get it out to potential users to find out what resonates, and then iterate quickly to try new possibilities if early ideas fail to get traction. In essence, it’s applying an optimization process to find product ideas and features that consumers would consider using.


pages: 401 words: 119,488

Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

Air France Flight 447, Asperger Syndrome, Atul Gawande, behavioural economics, Black Swan, cognitive dissonance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Brooks, digital map, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, framing effect, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, index card, John von Neumann, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, meta-analysis, new economy, power law, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, statistical model, Steve Jobs, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, theory of mind, Toyota Production System, William Langewiesche, Yom Kippur War

It documents the FBI’s work products and is used in conjunction with information we collect or access through other partnerships in order to further data.” “agile programming” The words “lean” and “agile” have come to mean different things in different settings. There is, for example, lean product development, lean start-ups, agile management, and agile construction. Some of these definitions or methodologies are very specific. In this chapter, I generally use the phrases in their most global sense. However, for more detailed explanations of the various implementations of these philosophies, I recommend Rachna Shah and Peter T.


pages: 515 words: 126,820

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World by Don Tapscott, Alex Tapscott

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, altcoin, Alvin Toffler, asset-backed security, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, Blythe Masters, Bretton Woods, business logic, business process, buy and hold, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, commons-based peer production, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, currency risk, decentralized internet, digital capitalism, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, failed state, fiat currency, financial innovation, Firefox, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, future of work, Future Shock, Galaxy Zoo, general purpose technology, George Gilder, glass ceiling, Google bus, GPS: selective availability, Hacker News, Hernando de Soto, Higgs boson, holacracy, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information asymmetry, information security, intangible asset, interest rate swap, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Lean Startup, litecoin, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, microcredit, mobile money, money market fund, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, off grid, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer model, performance metric, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price mechanism, Productivity paradox, QR code, quantitative easing, radical decentralization, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, renewable energy credits, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, search costs, Second Machine Age, seigniorage, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, smart grid, Snow Crash, social graph, social intelligence, social software, standardized shipping container, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Nature of the Firm, The Soul of a New Machine, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, Turing complete, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, unorthodox policies, vertical integration, Vitalik Buterin, wealth creators, X Prize, Y2K, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

We’re beginning the next major phase of the digital revolution. Michelle Tinsley of Intel explained why her company is deeply investigating the blockchain revolution: “When PCs became pervasive, the productivity rates went through the roof. We connected those PCs to a server, a data center, or the cloud, making it really cheap and easy for lean start-ups to get computer power at their fingertips, and we’re again seeing rapid innovation, new business models.”18 Intel wants to accelerate the process of understanding what’s working, what’s not working, and where the opportunities lie. “We could see this technology be a whole other step function of innovation, where it enables all sorts of new companies, new players.


pages: 441 words: 136,954

That Used to Be Us by Thomas L. Friedman, Michael Mandelbaum

addicted to oil, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Andy Kessler, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, blue-collar work, Bretton Woods, business process, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, centre right, Climatic Research Unit, cloud computing, collective bargaining, corporate social responsibility, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, delayed gratification, drop ship, energy security, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, full employment, Google Earth, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), job automation, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, Lean Startup, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, mass immigration, more computing power than Apollo, Network effects, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, oil shock, PalmPilot, pension reform, precautionary principle, proprietary trading, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Jobs, the long tail, the scientific method, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, University of East Anglia, vertical integration, WikiLeaks

Two Israelis, Shai Policker, a medical engineer, and Dr. Edy Soffer, a prominent gastroenterologist, joined a Seattle-based engineering team (led by an Australian) to help with the design. A company in Uruguay specializing in pacemakers built the prototype. This is the latest in venture investing: a lean start-up whose principals are rarely in the same place at the same time and which takes advantage of all the tools of the connected world—teleconferencing, e-mail, the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, and faxes—to make use of the best expertise and low-cost, high-quality manufacturing. We’ve described cloud computing.


pages: 584 words: 149,387

Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process by Kenneth S. Rubin

bioinformatics, business cycle, business intelligence, business logic, business process, continuous integration, corporate governance, fail fast, hiring and firing, index card, inventory management, iterative process, Kanban, Lean Startup, loose coupling, minimum viable product, performance metric, shareholder value, six sigma, tacit knowledge, Y2K, you are the product

Cutter Information Corp. Reinertsen, Donald G. 2009a. “Types of Processes.” Guest blog entry found at www.netobjectives.com/blogs/Types-of-Processes. Reinertsen, Donald G. 2009b. The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development. Celeritas Publishing. Ries, Eric. 2011. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Crown Business. Schwaber, Ken. 1995. “Scrum Development Process.” In OOPSLA Business Object Design and Implementation Workshop, ed. J. Sutherland et al. Springer. Schwaber, Ken. 2004. Agile Software Development with Scrum.


pages: 561 words: 157,589

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us by Tim O'Reilly

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Alvin Roth, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Bill Joy: nanobots, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, blockchain, book value, Bretton Woods, Brewster Kahle, British Empire, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computer vision, congestion pricing, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Dennis Ritchie, deskilling, DevOps, Didi Chuxing, digital capitalism, disinformation, do well by doing good, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, George Akerlof, gig economy, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Gordon Gekko, gravity well, greed is good, Greyball, Guido van Rossum, High speed trading, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, Hyperloop, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, information asymmetry, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invisible hand, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jitney, job automation, job satisfaction, John Bogle, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kaizen: continuous improvement, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, Larry Wall, Lean Startup, Leonard Kleinrock, Lyft, machine readable, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, McMansion, microbiome, microservices, minimum viable product, mortgage tax deduction, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, OSI model, Overton Window, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, Paul Buchheit, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Sam Altman, school choice, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, SETI@home, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, social web, software as a service, software patent, spectrum auction, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strong AI, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, telepresence, the built environment, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the map is not the territory, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Tony Fadell, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, two-pizza team, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, universal basic income, US Airways Flight 1549, VA Linux, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, web application, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, yellow journalism, zero-sum game, Zipcar

From the very first day a company is funded by venture capitalists, or launches without funding, its success is dependent on achieving key metrics such as user adoption, usage, or engagement. Because the service is online, this feedback comes in near-real time. In the language of Eric Ries’s popular Lean Startup methodology, the first version is referred to as “minimum viable product (MVP),” defined as “that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.” The goal of every entrepreneur is to grow that MVP incrementally till it finds “product-market fit,” resulting in explosive growth.


pages: 677 words: 206,548

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It by Marc Goodman

23andMe, 3D printing, active measures, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Bill Joy: nanobots, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, borderless world, Boston Dynamics, Brian Krebs, business process, butterfly effect, call centre, Charles Lindbergh, Chelsea Manning, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, Cody Wilson, cognitive dissonance, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, data is the new oil, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, digital rights, disinformation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, don't be evil, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, future of work, game design, gamification, global pandemic, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Gordon Gekko, Hacker News, high net worth, High speed trading, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, hypertext link, illegal immigration, impulse control, industrial robot, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Harrison: Longitude, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, Large Hadron Collider, Larry Ellison, Laura Poitras, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, license plate recognition, lifelogging, litecoin, low earth orbit, M-Pesa, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mobile money, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, national security letter, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, off grid, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, operational security, optical character recognition, Parag Khanna, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, personalized medicine, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, printed gun, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, refrigerator car, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rodney Brooks, Ross Ulbricht, Russell Brand, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, security theater, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strong AI, Stuxnet, subscription business, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, tech worker, technological singularity, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, uranium enrichment, Virgin Galactic, Wall-E, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Wave and Pay, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, web application, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, you are the product, zero day

In other words, with sufficient mule and HR capacity, losses attributable to cyber crime could be ten thousand times worse. The Lean (Criminal) Start-Up The structure of Crime, Inc., like that of any modern techno-centric organization, is not fixed in time and space but rather constantly in flux. In his book The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Eric Ries outlines methods by which budding entrepreneurs can create new products “under conditions of extreme uncertainty.” For criminals, uncertainty is where they excel, never knowing when the next police raid or rival gang drive-by shooting will take place.


pages: 864 words: 222,565

Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller by Alec Nevala-Lee

Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, American energy revolution, Apple II, basic income, Biosphere 2, blockchain, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, Columbine, complexity theory, Computer Lib, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, declining real wages, digital nomad, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, East Village, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, Frank Gehry, gentrification, gig economy, global village, Golden Gate Park, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, hydraulic fracturing, index card, information retrieval, James Dyson, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kitchen Debate, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, Lean Startup, Lewis Mumford, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, megastructure, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, Mother of all demos, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, Own Your Own Home, Paul Graham, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, reality distortion field, remote working, Ronald Reagan, side project, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the medium is the message, Thomas Malthus, universal basic income, urban planning, urban renewal, We are as Gods, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

Ultimately, the dome was less innovative as a structure than as the organizing principle that Fuller had sought since Wichita. In the privately circulated essay “Universal Requirements for a Dwelling Advantage,” in which he revised a list of the basic functions of shelter that he had been updating for two decades, he furnished an entire manual for a lean start-up. An invention, Fuller wrote, began with one person, whom he advised to keep a detailed journal, while the next stage called for associates to build models and study production curves. He described his hypothetical company all the way to public relations, which was guided by rules that he would follow only erratically: RULE I: NEVER SHOW HALF-FINISHED WORK.


pages: 864 words: 272,918

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris

2021 United States Capitol attack, Aaron Swartz, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, back-to-the-land, bank run, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Black Lives Matter, Bob Noyce, book scanning, British Empire, business climate, California gold rush, Cambridge Analytica, capital controls, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, cloud computing, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, company town, computer age, conceptual framework, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, deskilling, digital map, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erlich Bachman, estate planning, European colonialism, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, George Floyd, ghettoisation, global value chain, Golden Gate Park, Google bus, Google Glasses, greed is good, hiring and firing, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, immigration reform, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, land reform, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, legacy carrier, life extension, longitudinal study, low-wage service sector, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Max Levchin, means of production, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, microdosing, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral panic, mortgage tax deduction, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Oculus Rift, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, PageRank, PalmPilot, passive income, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, phenotype, pill mill, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, popular electronics, power law, profit motive, race to the bottom, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, refrigerator car, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Robert Bork, Robert Mercer, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, semantic web, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, social web, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, Suez canal 1869, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech worker, Teledyne, telemarketer, the long tail, the new new thing, thinkpad, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, transcontinental railway, traumatic brain injury, Travis Kalanick, TSMC, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban renewal, value engineering, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, Vision Fund, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Wargames Reagan, Washington Consensus, white picket fence, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Y2K, Yogi Berra, éminence grise

Speed Bumps Despite how they appear to us now, at first it was hard to understand the rise of the scraper advertising and crab platforms politically. The world’s turbulent 1990s left political narratives scrambled, and capital’s orthogonal attack on labor caught the United States by surprise. Surely big multinational employers weren’t worth defending against lean start-ups, especially when, thanks to burning piles of investor cash, the latter offered easy user experiences, lower prices, and incentives for contractors. Walmart, Clear Channel, Bechtel, Exxon, Goldman Sachs, and Starbucks were the evil corporations, not Amazon, Apple, Google, Twitter, and Facebook.